


All About The Silver Lining

by JessicaX



Category: Everwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Diary/Journal, Dildos, F/F, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-21
Updated: 2011-12-09
Packaged: 2020-12-28 05:55:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 27
Words: 43,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21131756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessicaX/pseuds/JessicaX
Summary: Feeling like she's hit rock bottom, Laynie Hart starts a diary in an attempt to cope with everything that has gone so absurdly wrong in her life. Will she and Amy Abbott mend their burned bridges? Maybe... but where do they lead now? M: language, F/.





	1. ♦ ONE ♦

**Author's Note:**

> Characters/settings © Greg Berlanti and the WB (which is what the channel was called when Everwood was on the air, so I’ll not be calling it by that hideous name it goes by these days). Original story elements ©2011 Jessex. Rated M for language, drugs/alcohol use and abuse, brief references to self-mutilation, and NSFW content. This is not for the faint Hart (lol). 
> 
> [AO3 NOTE, 2019: This fic is from 8 years ago, not brand new haha. I somehow missed it when I was first transferring all my work over from FFn. So I'm sorry for the influx of author alerts some of you who are following me for other fics are about to receive!]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (original FFn author note)
> 
> I’ve always wanted to write an Everwood fic, but haven’t. That simple. Wasn’t brave enough. A few months ago, I wrote the first chapter of this and laid it aside when I was watching the show again… and I was inspired to go back and take a second look at the scrap when I saw the premiere of that new show Revenge, which stars Emily Vancamp (Amy). It’s nowhere near as amazing as Everwood was, but it couldn’t hope to be. When you read this, I want you to understand that this was my favourite programme. I adored it to the point where I shed physical tears when I learned it was being cancelled. Four seasons was NOT enough! This is the only show that moved me so drastically in my life, though there have been many others I cared for. I still love it, I always will; it was so perfect and beautiful and earnest when all others would be false. This sounds pretty ridiculous, but I mean it, I really, really mean it.  
From infancy, I knew this fic’s title. I looked, and I don’t think I saw another fic with the same name, so destiny strikes again in my favour. Yay! The title is something Laynie once said to Amy in the episode (ironically) named “The L Word”:  
AMY: I don’t know what I’d do without you.  
LAYNE: That’s me; I’m all about the silver lining.  
This particular femslash will be a little different. Typically, I have a set length for the chapters of each of my fictions (usually between 8-10 pages per chapter). This time I’m writing it as Laynie Hart in journal format. Some “entries” will be pushing ten pages, some not even a full page (for realism). I’m sorry if you feel dissatisfied with a given chapter’s length, but I’m hoping that you can keep this in mind and understand why I’ve done it the way I have. Rest assured that by the end of its 26-odd chapters, Silver Lining will be a bit longer than RAYCOG, my most recent offering [EDIT: it was at time of original posting].  
Ready for more? No? Too blinking bad – away we go!

Uh... here's the thing. I always sucked at big speeches and flowery words. Even worse at opening lines. Which is way obvious by now. Sorry about that.

I'm starting a journal because I have some stuff I'm trying to work through. Tons of stuff, and some of it's pretty crucial, some of it's background noise I can't seem to tune out. Let's see where my ballpoint pen takes us.

The name gold-leafed in the bottom-right corner of the front cover is “Colin Hart”, but I'm not him. I'm his sister, Laynie. Brothers and sisters fight over stuff and share and “borrow” all the time, right? So if you aren't an only child I bet you're not too shocked to find out that I'm not the person this thing was given to (by his father on his fourteenth birthday; it was supposed to be some kind of memorable, rite-of-passage male bonding deal, don't ask me). He stuffed into the back of the closet and never used it at all, so who cares if I stole it?

What you might not realize is that he's kind of dead, so I doubt he'll be asking for it back anytime soon.

You probably think I'm being a little cold about his death, and I am. It's hard to feel those shooting pangs of remorse and sorrow every waking moment when they've been hanging around for almost two years now. The story goes a little something like this: Colin was tooling around in Daddy's truck and got into an accident; it blew. He was in a coma for a while, which blew harder. Then he miraculously came back to life, which was almost okay... but went back under the knife and we lost him for good. Gale-force blowing.

That was almost a year ago, though. What's the standard length of time to sit around moping about this stuff? I mean, with a pet goldfish I bet it's somewhere in the three-days-to-a-week range, but for family... a month? Six months? Definitely not any longer than that, or you'll waste away to nothing.

Like Amy.

There's some weird connection between the Harts and the Abbotts that's been growing and growing since the dawn of time. Sometime between diapers and diaphragms, Amy started dating Colin, and I think everybody expected me to hook up with her brother, Bright. Let's head that one off with a resounding “NEVER IN A MILLION FREAKING YEARS.” He's cool and all, I guess... for a guy with the IQ of a celery stick. And he was Colin's best friend, and his sister was dating him so it would be all picture-perfect bookend-y. Except, huh-uh; my standards are higher.

Like Ephram.

Another history lesson: world-famous neurosurgeon loses his wife to (theme established?) a car accident, and uproots his son and daughter from the Big Apple to the Little Hole-In-The-Wall. Or, Hole-In-The-Mountain: Everwood, my hometown and the source of all misery. Blah blah blah, Dr Brown randomly finds himself removing chunks of bone from Colin's brain stem, the boy is mostly fixed. It's the kind of deal that forever links destinies.

Between you and me, it never sat well with me how Amy roped Ephram into doing her dirty work. The guy has it hard enough, losing not just a parent, but the parent that actually cared. Then he gets moved to some crappy little mountain town that's not even on a map by the absentee parent that decides he's ready to be Superdad. But Amy's so wrapped up in my brother's plight that she can't even understand how messed up it is to cozy up to him just so she can get his dad's help with her boyfriend. Couldn't she tell that he was crushing on her for real?

And if you're reading this, Amy... well, you deserve it. I ain't telling you nothing you don't already know. So get over it.

I was going somewhere with all this... wait, yeah. So who am I, what am I doing? As long as I'm trying to puke my thoughts onto paper I might as well get into my own family.

My parents fail. No, I don't mean they mean well but they keep making mistakes. They're not good parents who work too hard and can't make it home for dinner every night. They're not good friends to their children but bad at setting an example. When I say they fail, I mean it; FAIL. Eff Ay Eye Ell.

My mom is doped up on like, quadruple my own dosage of antidepressants, and my father, um... self-medicates. Which means he crawls into the bottom of a bottle of Jack every single night of the calendar year. He dried it up while Colin was sick, but once his son was gone for good that was the end of his ride on the sobriety wagon. So neither of them get credit for setting good examples. But with Colin, at least they tried; at least they encouraged him, fought for him, dug up medical care and did what they thought was best (even though most of the time they were just fucking things up way worse than they already were).

Me? I might as well not be alive as far as they're concerned. Dad can barely remember my name, much less anything deeper. Mom's always on my case, never stopping to think about how rough I have it, never asking how I feel or what I want, or want to do next. She sees me crying and lashing out and junk and sticks me on pills. They help, don't get me wrong... but she's totally using them as a substitute parent. And they don't work that way.

So when I tell you that Colin, Amy, Bright and Ephram were the only things tying me to Everwood, the only things keeping me from running back to that all-girls school, I hope you get that I'm not being melodramatic. It's just real. There's no larger group of extended friends, no loving family, no clubs or obligations or cheerleading squad or any of that annoying bull. Just four people.

Ephram and I had a thing once. It fizzled. Let's not get into that.

Bright... eh, we were never really _that _close. Just buds-by-association.

Colin's high school basketball jersey was retired after he died.

So who's that leave? Don't strain yourself too hard to come up with it.

The whole reason I stuck around as long as I did was for Amy; for her to have a shoulder to lean on, so both of us could have at least one other person to spontaneously burst into tears with. Even with my parents nearby, I didn't feel that compassionate vibe from them; me falling apart would just drive them further into depression, and they would end up resenting me for it. I'm too much for them to handle. Story of my life. And losing Colin again was too much for _me_ to handle, so I made a not-so-triumphant return to St Margret’s. Not like I left for good...

Okay, my hand is cramping and I'm already getting tired of back-story which means you have got to be. Flash forward to the good stuff. Let's see... back in Everwood following my brother's funeral, summer's over, classes start. I make the huge, stupid mistake of telling Amy I'm on Zoloft and like a total sheep she decides she needs that, too. Except she probably needed them more than me. While making regular trips to the drugstore for her meds, she meets Tommy “Crackhead” Callahan, and I warn her to stay away from him... but at first, he really seems like he's off the sauce and getting his life back in shape, and she needs somebody new in her life who's not her bratty ex-friends Page and Kayla, or even Ephram (who's got a huge hard-on for his sister’s babysitter as it turns out). So in spite of Methboy's character flaws, I tell her to go for it. Why the hell not?

Until it turns out he's still using. The rehab didn't take. Even if he's not still using, he's still dealing, so it's whatever. The point is, Tommy didn't get as far away from the drug scene as he claimed he did, and now he's trying to drag my best friend down with him. What a useless wasteoid.

Here's where it gets ridiculous; Amy takes him back. After he lies to her about being a pusher! He shows up all strung out on something and sobbing and whining and begging, and she folds like a cheap lawn chair. So I tell her she's being dumb, and she tells me to get the hell out. That's fine. I am so done with this place.

See what I did there? I said “this place” because Amy was my last holdout. If there's no Colin, no Amy and (obviously) no Ephram, then Everwood is completely yesterday. Screw this shithole.

I'm kind of full of it, though, right? You get that. I can't ever hate this place, not seriously... no matter how much I want to. It's home. But sometimes you can't go home again. Tom Waits said that, or somebody... I don't remember.

But I'm stuck. I'd love nothing more than to bounce nowish and find myself at that disgusting boarding school again, because at least there I'm more than The Sister Of The Coma Kid – or worse, Amy's Weird Friend. It's bad enough being known only through Colin! Thing is, I can't leave because it's too close to the end of the school year, and I've run out of “Get Out Of Jail Free Due To Family Crisis” cards. It's not like I've asked my parents yet, but it's pretty obvious I'll get smacked down if I try. The worst part of all is that after the year ends, I'll _still _be expected to hang around all summer before the next semester starts.

What do you do in a town where there's nobody worth talking to?

That's where my dilemma comes in. I've been kicking around for a while, trying to blot out the rumours that Amy overdosed and had to get her stomach pumped, or that Tommy did and is dead and Amy's in jail. Crazy shit. I really have no desire to pine after Ephram again, babysitter or no babysitter. Bright? He's a real barrel of laughs. See, he's graduating, so everything with him is about his future. Boring. Extra boring when he has no future, since the suspension and low grades guaranteed that he won't be headed to Yale or Notre Dame anytime soon. Maybe there were a few guys I tried to hook up with at parties, but it lost its flavour pretty quick when they went straight from “Hi” to their hand up my skirt; I'm not so lonely and damaged yet that I'll give it up that easy. And as we've discussed, my parents are nonexistent. Nobody else in this town knows I'm alive.

Lucky for me I've got this Zoloft shooting through my system, or I'd be slitting my wrists right about now. And saying stuff like that is exactly how I ended up with them in the first place.

There. Now I've put all my trauma down on paper. And I'm looking at it for an answer... and I see nothing obvious. How about you? You see some light at the end of this dismal black tunnel? I'm coming up with nada. I even started playing some of Colin's old PlayStation games just to have something to do – and I _hate _video games. That has to be a sign of the apocalypse.

So I'm looking for another kind of sign, for an out. For a way to become something more. It's not just that I want something to do... I want some_one_ to _be._ Y'know? If I keep on going as Invisible Laynie from now until the end of August, there won't be enough medication in the world to fix me.

This is more than a journal. It's a silent cry for help.

What now? What do I put now? What do I do? It's either cry for the sixth time today, walk around town like a zombie, or go back to _Final Fantasy VIII._ Or cut myself; I've done it once or twice, just to feel. And I don't want your pity, or your “eww blood why would you do that blah blah”, okay? I've also drank, and doped myself into a stupor, and spent an entire day in a movie theater, and every other thing I could think of to fill up my day, to make myself feel something. And nothing works, which is why I don't keep doing that stuff.

Whatever. Forget it. Keeping a diary was a lame idea; third-graders keep diaries. Filling up paper with ink never helped anybody solve their entire life. I'm just gonna have to accept that I'm doomed to the loneliest summer of all time, cross my fingers and hope I survive. So kindly disregard all of this.

But I won't throw it away, not yet. Might be morbidly funny to reread someday.

_Laynie_


	2. ♦ TWO ♦

No, I’m not going to put dates on these entries. I don’t feel like it. What kind of spoiled brat are you? Psh.

So guess who came crawling back? Okay, I’m sorry, that was a trick question because it has two answers. One, me, because I'm writing in this damn thing again. Two, Amy.

Turns out the rumours were true; Tommy OD'd. Amy's fine and all, but her dad had to show up at the party she was at (talk about buzzkill!) and give him a shot of whatever so he wouldn't die. Then he shows up after he checks out of the hospital and thanks her dad and stuff, and tries to get Amy back. What a dope – and I do mean “dope”.

I know this now because Amy showed up on my doorstep, saying she ran into my mother at the pharmacy – and decided she doesn't need her meds anymore after seeing what they did to Mommy Bleariest. That also reminded her that I exist. How endearing; I'm an afterthought.

It was a hard sell, but of course I let her in. Truth is, even though I'm still mad at her for blowing me off, I'm so bored off my ass that I'd talk to Kayla and Page if they stopped me on the street. Or even Ephram at this point, awkwardness be damned.

There was crying, there was yelling, there was her whining like a spoiled toddler because it's what she does best... and then there was hugging, and (empty?) promises to never fight again, and feeble stabs at making plans for the weekend. Of course, neither of us are really solid in the Friend-Zone again yet, so this is the initial pre-friend summit. Next time we run into each other is when we'll really start hanging out together.

Which gives me time to beat Final Fantasy. Yay.

Oops – gotta go. I think I just heard my dad come home from the bar and knock over something super breakable, and there could be blood to clean up. If I wait too long, it'll stain the rugs.

_Laynie_


	3. ♦ THREE ♦

Tell me if I'm crazy. Tell me I am, because I might be, I have to be. I'm freaking out all over the place.

Amy and I have been hanging out again, when she's not hanging out with Bright and Ephram. Believe it or not, the boys are friends. It's so weird it should be on _Ripley's._ Anyway, it's not quite like old times... but it's good. We had a lot to catch up on from our weeks of estrangement – mostly on her end, because I've just been going to parties and vegging out.

Why am I asking you to validate me? K. Let's do this.

So we're at the movies, and we're watching Brad Pitt annihilate something with his pecs or whatever, I can't remember now. Not that it makes a difference, since the movie sucked ass. I reach over and take her hand, and she lays her head on my shoulder. This is nothing new, you know? We're old friends. Then we're both digging in the popcorn tub at the same time, and... it gets weird.

I'm trying here, but it's gonna be really hard to outline without just sounding stupid. Maybe if I can get it down on paper and get it down _right_ it'll help me figure this out. Bear with me.

My best guess is it's something about that fake, greasy butter they always pump all over the popcorn because they're too cheap to use anything of higher quality. Nobody really wants it, but if you ask them to put it on the side or leave it off, you're committing movie theater sacrilege. It's tradition. Anyway... something about the way her fingers slide over mine makes me shiver, because it's a feeling I'm not used to. I mean, our other hands were clean, and I'm used to the feeling of clean hands. But it's kind of unusual to slather yourself with oil and then touch somebody. Unless you're into Greco-Roman wrestling.

I shiver, and she looks over at me, like “What's your deal?” So I kind of laugh – not a real laugh, just one of those things where you smile and let a quick breath out through your nose. An almost-laugh. And the way her eyes turn back to the movie a little wider while she smiles back... it's so obvious she thinks I'm losing it. Like there's a joke I told but she not only didn't think it was funny, but didn't even recognize it as a joke in the first place. Neither of us bring it up again.

Okay, I just reread all of that and it's exactly what happened and how it happened. But I don't understand it any better than I did before. It just sounds like a moment of weirdness, which is pretty accurate but unhelpful.

The rest of the night got more and more awkward. We went back to Mama Joy's Diner and split a sundae... and when we got to the last bite, instead of play-fighting over it like we normally would she pushed the dish toward me and told me she was full. Little stuff like that.

Then we had this conversation back at the Hart house... hmm, maybe I should write the whole thing down. Or as best as I can remember it, but that's pretty good, actually; some school counselors were convinced I have near-total recall. Not that it ever helped my report card any.

“What's this?” she asked.

“It's a lace teddy,” I told her. This was in my room, just so we're clear; Amy would never own anything like that anyway. “What, haven't you ever been to Victoria's Secret?”

“No, I have – I just didn't know you were into sexy underwear, that's all.”

“It's for special occasions. Which is why the price tag is still attached.”

At that, she laughed; all too obvious what I meant. “Right. If I had something like this, it'd still be in the box, that's for sure.”

“You're not still regretting hanging onto your virginity, are you? That Tommy loser wasn't worth-”

“I know,” she cut me off, looking a little embarrassed. I get it, I really do; she wanted Tommy up to a point, but even though she now realizes that he wasn't the right one to give herself to it was probably still frustrating to have to wait even longer. “But... am I going to die without becoming a woman?”

“What are you, a Puritan? You're a woman if you've got tits, Ames.”

“Don't be gauche,” she sighed, holding it up in front of her torso and standing in front of my full-length mirror. “I just meant...”

“What?”

See, here's where I get confused again, because she looks between me and the teddy and puts it back, like she's in a hurry to not be touching it anymore. “Whatever, I dunno, I can't remember.”

“No, you were talking about womanhood. Let's have it.”

She glanced at the door – it was still just as closed as it had been before – and whispered, “Do you know the number of a good, um... male prostitute?”

“Are you _serious?!” _I shout, totally involuntary because I'm, like, floored. She shushes me, and I drop my voice. “Come on, Amy, don't go down that road. You're not one of those girls.”

“How do you know? I went down some pretty dark, twisting roads while we weren't speaking. I could be one of 'those girls' by now.”

“Bullshit.”

She nods, playing with her fingernails. “Okay, maybe I'm full of it. But I'm still sick of this whole pressure to pop my cherry with the 'right guy' or whatever, it's... it makes it too hard. After Colin and Tommy didn't get around to it, I'm all impatient and tired of worrying.”

“Yeah, okay, but a _man-whore?_ That's about the lowest common denominator you could find. Just... I dunno, bat your eyelashes at one of the football players. He'll shuck you and jump your bones in five minutes flat.”

“Ew,” Amy griped. “No thanks, I'm so not interested. There's no County boy worth boning.”

“Apparently you are interested,” I fired back. “But if you're too scared of getting a little dirt on your reputation, why don't you think back to how you're the 'OD Girl' these days? It doesn't get much lower than that; you can't fall off the floor.”

So by this point, she's pacing back and forth with a hand over her mouth. I know if it were anybody but me, that would be when she stopped because it's just too personal to share. But because I am the great Laynie Hart and there's too much going on in her head... “What about... okay, never mind, that's just way too gross.”

“What about what? Spill.”

“You know... one of those...” She made some gestures with her hand that outlined a general shape, and I began to get the picture.

“A dildo?”

“Don't say it out loud, geez!”

I had to laugh at her. “Dude, this isn't _Beetlejuice; _saying it out loud won't make it come to life and suck you into a scale model of the city. Relax.”

“Never mind the whole stupid idea,” she said, blushing hard now. “I'll just die a virgin.”

“You will not die a virgin. Just... wait, the right guy will come to you. It's like I told you before, you're building it up into a huge deal when it's not.”

“Yeah, it _is_ like you said before; I should get it over with and keep my expectations low. That _was_ what you told me, right?”

By this point I was getting annoyed, but I could empathise so I did my best to keep a civil tone. “Ames... you are so missing my point. It's not a big deal, so _stop giving a shit._ Stop thinking about it at all! Get on with your life, study for finals, send ass-kissing letters to universities or whatever. But if you keep obsessing about it, you'll wind up under some Hell's Angel with a bottle of tequila in your hand, wondering where it all went wrong. So chillax.”

And that's where the conversation ended. We kind of sat around feeling all twitchy for a minute or so, then she changed the subject and it was over. But is it?

The popcorn and the sundae were weird. Then the whole conversation about virginity, which normally would be the kind of thing we revel in... there was this unacknowledged _strain. _Like we shouldn't be talking about it. Except that's exactly the topic that's right up our alley on a normal day. Is she... pulling away from me again?

See, you're probably sitting there thinking I'm a dumbass, and I'm reading stuff into this that's not even there. But I gotta wonder if the last fight we had permanently broke something. She chose Tommy over me. I was trying to protect her, and she cast me aside. I'm trying to forgive and forget, though – I mean it, not just pretending to be copacetic on the surface and then making little passive-aggressive comments like some catty sorority chick. Seriously, I don't care, because I know she was in a really bad headspace. At least she came around. But maybe... she hasn't forgiven herself for it? Maybe that, and now she feels kind of uncomfortable whenever we're extra buddy-buddy because we kind of fractured our “buddy” status for a while. So it's like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Am I making any sense?

Never mind. Forget this journal. I keep using it as some kind of tool, except I'm no handyman. I'd use a wrench to hammer in nails without batting an eye. I'm sure this will work itself out, and I'll be back to laugh at myself within these pages soon. Take care, journal o' mine.

_Laynie_


	4. ♦ FOUR ♦

Jesus Christ I did not see this coming.

I'm not even in my room right now. I'm at the Mile High Diner in Denver. What am I doing way out here, you may ask? I'll tell you what. I had to get away. Distance was imperative. And so were pancakes; they heal way better than booze.

Over the past week, I kept hanging out with Amy, and things kept being _wacky_. She won't stop bringing up the dildo thing, or male prostitutes, or going to parties – except there sadly aren't any good parties happening around here lately. The girl just kept going on and on about getting some, like she was hard up. Thing is, she's not, because she's never had any of it to begin with, so how's she supposed to miss what she's never had? Make that wacky _cubed_.

I spend a lot of time telling her to put a cork in it, but I also keep talking about my pathetic experiences, because she seems to like, find them comforting or whatever. That “misery loves company” thing that Soul Asylum sang about last decade. It's weird to talk about with her now, though, because she makes it seem so much more important. In the olden days, she'd ask for details, we'd laugh, and then it was like, what's on cable right now? But now... now it's _important._ Now she's obsessing, asking me to run over stuff again and again, even while she's talking about finding a man-whore to do the deed. Like she's dead serious. It's creepy.

Today – technically yesterday since it is now an ungodly hour – we had spent almost all day at school without discussing it, which was awesome. Then we're watching TV at her house and an ad comes on for one of those tiny fingertip “massagers”, which brings us back to...

“Maybe I should get one of those.”

“And this is where I came in,” I gripe.

“No, seriously,” Amy said, biting the nail on her index finger. “I mean, I'm so over waiting for a guy to come along, so maybe it would be smarter.”

“The guy will come. And then he'll _come, _and you'll come, and I'll probably come wherever I am from extreme relief that we won't have to debate this anymore.”

“It's easy for you,” she fires up, glaring at me. “You've been there and done that, and got the t-shirt. What have I done? One or two extended makeout sessions. Nobody's ever going to break the shrink-wrap on my womanhood.”

Pay attention, people: this is where I put my foot in my mouth. Where I perpetrate one enormous royal fuckup the likes of which the world has never seen and might not see again. Where I made the mistake of saying, “God, if being virginal is such a huge burden why don't _I_ just pop you?”

Now, I've known Amy since we were in the playpen. I can tell when she's shocked and offended, and when she thinks I’m being disgusting. I can also tell when she's pleasantly surprised that a good idea came along... and when she can see it's exactly what she's been waiting for. Which means as soon as I spotted the look on her face, my heart shot right down into my colon.

“Huh.”

“No,” I hissed at her, sitting up straighter on the couch. “No, Amy, no. I was joking. Tell me you know I was joking; say it out loud so we can all hear!”

“Oh, I know,” she half-laughed, no longer looking at me _or _the TV, still biting the tip of her fingernail. “But it makes a certain kind of sense, I guess. You could just do it, and then it would be over and I would be all set.”

“Super romantic,” I grunt as I fold my arms. “Why do the chocolates and a dozen roses when you can outline a boardroom strategy? It's the refreshing, FBLA approach to sex.”

This time she really did laugh at me, like I was being stupid. “Don't be stupid.” See? “I didn't mean we'd put on some quiet music and swap spit for an hour, I just meant, y'know... in, out, the end. It doesn't have to be weird.”

“Ames, I know you better than you know yourself, and I know you can't do 'in, out, the end' any better than you can do ‘Juggalette’. You'd turn it into a _thing_.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

I sigh, I roll my eyes, and I run a hand over my face. “I mean you'll be all gung-ho about it right up until it's about to happen, and then you'll get all panicky. Then, if we magically find the willpower to go through with it, you'll be all clingy and stalkery afterward, trying to keep me from seeing other people and giving me anniversary presents. A thing.”

“I...” Then she stopped and stared at me. “Whoa, whoa, you know I was only messing around, right? You're talking about it like we could ever really...”

Then there arrived the supreme mother of all awkward silences. She was probably thinking that she'd got caught, or wondering how into it I'd be, or something. How should I know? But I was thinking, _'This girl's cover is weaker than she realizes. I know what I saw when I brought up the option; she wanted to pounce on it, but knew I'd bolt if she did. So here we are, squirming and fidgeting while she tries to decide how to either backpedal, or pass off raging desire as passing interest. This oughtta be good.'_

So I really can't tell you how much she is or isn't _excited _at the idea of me doing it, but I'm pretty damn sure she's counting on me either way. Just my hunch.

“Laynie... I was just spitballing. You went right for us dating or whatever. That's so not what I meant, you know that, right?” Backpedalling.

“You tend to date or not-date; you're not the type to have a hook-up and then forget about it. How should I know what would happen after the deed?”

“But... but we're friends,” she reasoned, like that made all the difference. “I mean, best friends. There's not a long list of people I'd trust to do this with, that I'd feel comfortable doing this with. It'd be strictly medical, like an annoying favor kind of deal.”

She was starting to convince me that she meant it, but it's freaky where my mind was going with it all on its own. "No soft music, no lubed-up bodies, no tantric exercises? Really?"

“Promise.”

“No way!” I squeaked, just barely able to keep from yelling it; her Dad would have had an aneurism if he caught us discussing anything like that. “Amy, I'm not gonna shove my finger up there and, and... ew, God! How would I ever look at you again?”

“Come on, Laynie, that's not what I...” But when she caught the look on my face, she shrugged. “You could use some kind of, y'know, _implement._ And we wouldn't have to get naked and cuddle, and you could just count to three and do it and I'd be through with that prepubescent phase of my life. It sounds so much easier and so much less of a headache.”

“But...”

Then she dropped the bomb that usually kills all your chances of getting out of whatever disgusting obligation they've got you pinned under: “I'd so do it for you if you asked.”

Stupid friendship. Yeah, it got me waffling, but in the end I cleared my throat and turned my attention back to the TV. “No. You can do it on your own.”

“Laynie, please? I-”

“But,” I went on, lip curling, “I... might be able to help you out in the, uh... _implement_ department.”

“Really?” Then her brain caught up to her mouth. “Wait... how would you? Unless- _Laynie!_ You have a, a-”

“Shut up!” I hissed, blushing. “It's kind of for emergency use, right? Shit, that's the last thing I want people to know about, it's none of their business!”

“Where did you even get one?”

“They kind of get passed out at the door at St Margret’s,” I said with a smirk. “I mean, it's so easy to get your hands on one there. No boys, get it?”

Amy chewed on that for a second. “Are any of the students, y'know, lesbians?”

“Tons. But most are the lipstick kind.”

“Lipstick?”

“You know...” When she somehow didn't get it, I shrugged. “They wipe off their bi-curiosity like it's lipstick. When the year is up, they go home to their boyfriends and make-believe they never felt up that blonde in gym class.”

Amy's brown eyes bugged out. “Surreal.”

“Yep. Anyway, I'll let you borrow it on two conditions. First, you clean it up and give it back discreetly when you're done. Second... this is the end of your obsessing over virginity. If I fork over my weapon of mass elation, I don't wanna hear any more about how you'll die without ever 'knowing a man's touch' or whatever crap. Your seal _stays_ perforated. Got it?” Amy nodded, swallowing. “Good. I'll smuggle it over here tomorrow.”

“I'd rather do it at your place,” Amy said in a rush – and then covered her mouth like she hadn't meant to blurt it out that way. Which I can totally understand, since we all know how it sounded.

“Why?”

“It's nothing skeevy like you're thinking! But... come on, you know my dad. Somehow, some way, he'll find out and then it'll be some huge catastrophe. And no offense, but-”

“But my parents are ostriches; heads in the sand, oblivious.”

A little sad sigh escaped Amy's mouth, and just for a second we weren't talking about her problems. “Yeah. I... I didn't mean to bring it up, but it's true.”

“No sweat.” I flashed her a smile, figuring it was the easiest way to halt the oncoming pity party. “So much about the way they act is ruining my life that I might as well abuse the upsides. Feel free to climax in my room tomorrow.”

“Will the, uh, coast be clear?”

“Dad's at work, Mom's doing some lunch thing with the ladies of her I-so-don't-care. Nobody but us virginity-killers until about three. Did you wanna...” Here I motioned tipping my hand up in front of my mouth.

“Nah,” she sighed. “That would probably make it easier, but I'm trying to stay away from that stuff these days. All of it, drugs, drinks... Pixy Stix.”

“Gotcha. I'll drop by the store and get you some lavender-scented oils and a Kenny G album.”

And from there we just started making fun of each other and taking pot shots at the guy on TV with his bad combover. Fun stuff, but nothing important... nothing worth picking apart.

What, it's not bad enough? It's not INSANE enough that in a few hours, Amy is going to be showing up at my front door, ready to fire up my pocket rocket and shoot herself to the moon? This is not what I signed on for when we redrafted the Friendship Contract. I can't be her, her... facilitator. Why can't she just run herself a warm bath and start messing around until she finds her g-spot like normal girls?

Maybe the real reason I'm writing all this down is because I'm actually _hoping_ my parents find this. Mom and Dad, are you freaked out yet? Of course not; you'd have to be a few steps further away from catatonic to freak out. Whatever, it's cool. I'll just help my best friend get her rocks off and do it with a great big shit-eating grin. Super awesome end to a super awesome year!

_Laynie_


	5. ♦ FIVE ♦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Here is where it starts to get a lot more... obscene. Reader discretion advised.

Where do we start? Like Amy kept saying, "Let's just get it over with." Here's how it went.

Around noon, Amy comes over and we smile awkwardly at each other. She couldn't eat anything for lunch because she was too nervous, but now she's suddenly famished and craves simple sugars so we raid the fridge, polishing off this leftover chocolate pie and shooting whipped cream into our mouths straight from the can. Secretly this is a delay tactic, because (didn't I call it?) now that the appointed hour is upon us, she can't follow through with her master plan. I'm so not surprised.

Up to my room we go, her with her hands in her back pockets and humming a little tune. The same way you hum when you go past a cemetery or when the power goes out, right? To comfort yourself when you're scared. She was freaking. Deriving what was probably too much pleasure in her pain, I am completely unfazed as I stroll to the bookshelf and take down a book.

"Reading me a bedtime story?"

"You really don't recognize this?" I ask with a small half-smile. At the instant I start to open it, she laughs.

"The booksafe! Oh my God, I forgot all about that, we were so excited when we ordered it from that lame catalog, it was gonna hold all our secrets forever!"

"And it still does."

Amy's eyes went wide like Frisbees when she saw what I'd stashed inside our childhood heirloom. "Oh... MY God. Laynie, that thing is freaking huge!"

I shrugged as I took it out. “Eh, there are bigger ones. I’d say this is average size.” Then, to my complete amazement, she began to giggle. “What? What’s so funny?”

“I dunno, it’s… it’s blue.”

“So?”

“So it’s gonna be like… screwing a popsicle.”

“Fine, I’ll put it back.”

“No, come on,” she told me hurriedly, still laughing. “I just expected it to be like, flesh-toned.”

“Ew,” I breathed, disgusted. Because it’s disgusting, okay? The whole point of a toy is that it’s _not _a real guy, so making it look as much like one as possible kind of defeats the purpose to my way of thinking.

“So, um…” She anxiously brushed a lock of blond hair behind her ear. “I’m not really a hundred per cent on how we start this.”

“There is no ‘we’ in this equation,” I reminded her sternly. “There’s you, doing whatever you want to do with this, while I go downstairs and turn up the TV really, _really _loud.”

“You were serious about that?” Catching my eyeroll, she sighed and said, “I know, I know you were. Guess I was just kind of hoping you’d reconsider.”

“Here’s your brief tutorial,” I went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “This is your main apparatus. This,” I told her holding up a tiny bottle, “is the go-juice. Without the go-juice, things might _not _go if you get me. You do this,” and here I twisted the end, causing the room to fill with a buzzing noise, “when you’re feeling brave enough to take things to a higher plateau.”

Amy nodded, fists in front of her mouth as she stared at it, awestruck. I frowned at her, waited a few more seconds, then moved it a little to the left; her eyes followed. The same thing happened when I pulled it to the right. Fun. Then I snapped it off and sighed, “You still in there, Ames?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Then here.” I held it out to her, but she backed up a step. “Take it if you’re gonna take it.”

To my surprise, after glancing at me uncertainly, she actually did step forward and accept my loaner-gift. “Thanks. I, uh, I mean really, thanks for helping me out with this, Layne, I know it’s making you wig.”

“That’s what bee-eff-effs are for, cowgirl. Now I’ll leave you to it and come back in an hour – or if I hear your screams getting too loud.”

“Screams?!”

“Get to work!”

Down I went to the living room, where I found an episode of _Queer Eye_ to stare at. Of course, the whole time I waited for her to take care of business, I was thinking about it. Not in some perverted covetous way, but just… what was she doing at that moment? Did she get naked, or did she keep everything on and just slide down her pants to her ankles? Did she use her hands at all, or was my amiga one of those girls who can’t stand to touch herself because it’s “yucky” and went at it with only the toy? I honestly wouldn’t have the slightest clue one way or the other.

Feeling itchy, I went to the kitchen and got a root beer, inwardly wishing it was the non-root version. Maybe, not really… I just wanted something to do, to occupy my mind. I was staring at a commercial for whiter whites and brighter brights when I heard this loud THUMP from upstairs.

Great. Up until that point, I had been beyond content to pretend nothing was going on in my own house that I’d forever hate to think about, and now I had a _reason_. You know, to worry, to think, to focus on the situation instead of sweep it under the rug. Frowning at the ceiling, I waited a few seconds, squirmed, then yelled, “You okay up there?”

No answer. That could mean a million things. A simple “yes” or “no” would have been way preferable. What if she didn’t answer back because she couldn’t hear me, and that was all? What if she was too embarrassed to answer, worried that she’d sound funny in the heat of the moment? Then again, what if she fell and hit her head and was bleeding all over the floor, and I could have prevented my best friend’s death if I wasn’t feeling so awkward about-

Up I got, taking the stairs two at a time. Outside the door, I hesitated again, then knocked. “Ames?” I knocked again. “Grunt to let me know you understand what I’m saying!”

“Sorry,” she sobbed. It was very clearly a sob – and not a small one. This was the kind of horrible noise that comes out of your throat when you’re crying as hard as you possibly can while trying to stay quiet. A gurgling, shaking, awful monstrosity of sound.

I burst into the room, bracing myself for whatever sight I was about to find. Maybe my laptop was in a bazillion pieces. Maybe AMY was in a bazillion pieces. Maybe she was curled up on my bed with a pillow, lamenting her inability to screw herself silly… or maybe she already had done it and was mourning her lost innocence. Or maybe she was just a big baby. What? I know she’s a big baby, and I’m pretty sure she knows it, too.

What I didn’t expect to see was Amy with her boots and corduroys off, curled up with a pillow (okay, so I did predict that part), crying freely into it. I didn’t see blood, but that didn’t mean anything; I heard some girls don’t really bleed their first time, either because their hymen breaks extra easily or because they were born without one, or sometimes because they accidentally broke it when they were little kids. Me, I bled like a stuck pig (sorry to the squeamish ones). The dildo was behind her, as if she had rolled away to keep from seeing it anymore.

“Oh, Amy,” I sighed as I shut the door behind me. “I knew you couldn’t go through with it.”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed again. “I… I can’t make myself do it, I tried, I really tried a few times but I kept freezing up. I’m such a wimp!”

“It’s okay,” I soothed. My hand almost couldn’t touch her, but I made it anyway, made myself put it on her knee as I spoke. It was weird, but had to be done. “Go at your own pace. Are you even horny, or are you trying to force it?”

Amy shrugged. “Expected the heat to come when I started, um, doing stuff.”

“There’s your problem. You can’t make yourself get into it if you start out not wanting to do anything at all.”

“But I did!” she protested, sitting up. The streaks on her cheeks made me wince, but I tried not to make too big a deal. “It was hot, I was touching myself, and then pushing the… the th-thing into me, kind of rubbing it around down there, but when I said, ‘Okay, here we go, all or nothing’ some inner voice was like ‘NOTHING!’ and I had to listen. I feel so stupid!”

My face was starting to warm up, but I shrugged and said, “Sounds like you just need to mellow out. Do you, uh, maybe want some Kenny G after all?”

She let out a weak pip of a laugh, like some tiny dog barking. “Actually, music sounds good. The room being silent as a tomb is… intimidating somehow, if that makes any sense. Does it?”

“Sure.”

By the time I crossed to the stereo and loaded up a CD, she was crying again of course, but it at least she was responsive. Her total breakdown from last year, when she disconnected from reality right before what was supposed to be her epic ballet performance, was legendary by now and the last thing I wanted was to deal with something like that. After a minute, the soft sounds coming out of the radio made her look up slightly and go, “What is this?”

“Sigur Rós,” I told her gently. I should have been a lot meaner to her, but I dunno, she was just too pitiful, right? It would be like scolding a bad puppy who just peed in the corner. They can't help it. “Something quiet and unobtrusive. Though I could switch it up and put on some System Of A Down if you, uh-”

“No,” she half-laughed. “I don't need Armenian guys yelling at me while I'm trying to... well, you know.”

At that point, we both kind of looked at each other, then looked at her bottomless bottom. She was about to turn away, all shy and weepy, when I shrugged and said, “What? It's not like I didn't get treated to a cavalcade of coochie-shots every day at St Margret's. It's pretty much 'no guys, no clothes'.”

“Really?”

“I swear on a stack of Bibles, Ames. I’ve seen it all before.”

We both looked at each other some more. Then we did it some more. Then, uh, we did it some more. When did her tentative first steps into the realm of sexual independence turn into some half-assed staring contest?

Let me set this next part up; Amy was laying on her side. Her other knee was almost vertical before I realized she was opening her legs, and it wasn't until I got an eyeful of her before I woke up enough to yank my sight upward to the vintage Jack Off Jill poster on the wall.

Yeah, I know I just said that I saw all 31 Flavours of vaginas in private school, but none of my roommates nor the girls in the communal showers were _showing them to me._ This was Amy putting it on display, asking if I approved of its aesthetics. Inside my brain I'm like, “WHAAAT?!” But of course, how was I supposed to tell her it was freaking me out when I'd just assured her how super European I was about the whole thing?

“Laynie?”

That made me look back at her, and I told myself I was only going to look at her face, but I swear that it was because it was right out there and clearly visible that it became the unintended focal point of the entire room and I shifted nervously and caught light glinting off of it _which meant it wasn't dry _and then I had to yank my gaze up toward Jessicka again.

“Laynie?” More urgent the second time.

“Can you, uh... hang on, I have to sit down.” I sat. On the bed. STUPID, STUPID MOVE. “Uhh... so here's the thing, I have to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Are you turned on by me being in the room with you right now?”

“What?!” she yelped, clearly distressed. “That's so... Laynie, are you serious with this? Are you asking because _you're- _no way, never mind, that's so not possible!”

“You didn't answer me.” And she still didn't. “Look, I'm not gonna rat you out to your family or anything ridiculous if you are, but I kinda need to know.”

“I am.” When I whipped around to look her dead in the face, she jumped, but then she swallowed and whispered, “Hey, it's- listen for just a second. It's not that I think you're, um, _cute _or anything, no way, I'm not like that, but, well... I was trying to do something in here, and now you're in here too, and it's weird, y'know? I've n-never done this before at all, much less with company! So… having somebody else nearby…”

That was when I felt my pulse really speeding up. I mean, REALLY speeding up. I was already a nervous wreck, but listening to her admit I was causing her to feel a heightened sense of pleasure from exposing herself to the open air was... I dunno, erotic, in this clandestine, perverted way. Possibilities began to shoot through my mind, ones I'd always laughed at. Me and Amy could do this. I mean, not that we would, I was firmly grounded in reality and that was complete lunacy, but it wasn't _impossible._ We both had sex organs and hands and lips and tongues. If we wanted to...

The instant it cropped up in my mind, I stomped on it, like when you see a bug crawling out from under the refrigerator and you're already wearing combat boots. But it was still there, wriggling, looking up at me and daring me to finish it off. It wasn't a comforting thought, it wasn't a welcome thought, but I really could reach right out with my hand and touch her. Intimately.

And the crazy part of me that needed meds to keep it in check was saying, “What's stopping you?”

Hang on, I gotta pee. I promise I'll finish this when I get back, but I can't freaking hold it any longer!

_Laynie_


	6. ♦ SIX ♦

Back. I would have been back sooner, but Mom had to yell at me for leaving my toothbrush on the sink instead of putting it back where it goes. Even though I've actually found Dad's underwear sitting on the kitchen table before, I'm a “lazy brat” for the toothbrush? Anyway, we now return to my spooky campfire story.

From somewhere deep inside, I found the courage to clear my throat and whisper, “So... I'm gonna leave now, if you're okay in here.”

“Yeah.” Amy’s voice was a whisper, too. “I think so. But, um, thanks for coming to my rescue.”

I nodded. “What was that bump I heard, anyway?”

“I shoved my boot off the bed with my foot,” she said with one of those bashful, dopey grins of hers. “I was frustrated with myself for being so weak.”

While I was nodding at that, I spared a glance down at her. Nope, still there and still dripping with “anticipation”. The room was full of that smell; you know, the smell you try to use a whole bunch of Glade to make go away when you're done? Swallowing, I started to look away when I noticed movement; her hand glided to the very top and lightly brushed the golden fur that grew there. I cleared my throat nervously, and then her hand darted down further to cover herself.

“I...” It was her turn to cough before she tried again. “I didn't m-mean to do any... I uh, that was just...”

“Just?” I prompted a moment later, watching her face turn redder and redder.

“Just a reflex action,” she told me, pleading with me to understand. “You were staring at it, and that made me want to cover it up. But I guess I... sorry, I really don't know why I did that.”

My eyes went to hers again, and I saw fresh tears blooming, and I saw curiosity dancing with disgust. Curiosity... about me? About what I saw when I looked at her, or about what I was thinking and feeling, or what I might do next? God only knew.

“Do you want some help?” I blurted, and instantly wanted to put all the words back inside my face. Nope, not what I meant! “Uhh, I... with the dildo.” NOT ANY BETTER. “I could help you a little to get you started if you're too scared.”

Secretly, I guess I was praying that taunting her and saying she was scared might force her to pipe up that she was a big girl and could do anything all by herself and thus give me a true reason to simply agree with her and leave as fast as humanly possible. She didn't bite, not really. “Wait... you said you didn't w... want... what do you mean exactly when you say you'll help me? Are you seriously gonna shove it in there?!”

“Yeah,” I told her softly. “If you actually need that, I guess I could.”

Much faster than I was ready for – it was still at least ten seconds later, but hey, I was operating on Laynie Going Loco Time – she told me in low, reverent tones, “Are you sure?”

“No,” I told her honestly. “But if you're this scared of Soloflexing it, I suppose I'll have to do my best-friend duty and take one for the team.”

There were tiny moans in Amy's every breath now. Little ones, the kind you'd only notice if you were right next to her, like I was. I almost couldn't hear her when she breathed, “You _are_ already with me, and... and I'm so hot right now, and my pants are off, and the thingy is right here...”

I would be offended that she was using me out of convenience, except I know her well enough to tell when she's rationalizing. The supposed “reasons” she might go through with asking for my help were window dressing. It was SO obvious she was too scared to let me leave.

Without thinking about it much, I moved to test how ready she was to accept brutal punishment. Our hands slid over each other as I touched her for the first time, and we both sucked in a shaky breath. This wasn't just weird, it was dirty and evil. Her moan told me what her innermost being thought of it, though.

“Wait!” she suddenly blurted, though she made no physical move to stop me. “This is crazy, I... I don't want you being with me like this, I don't think you should have to! Why am I such a spaz?”

“Shh,” I told her as I caressed. It was like being taken over by a sinister sapphic ghost. Part of me was trying not to think too hard about what I was doing, but the rest of me didn’t mind so much. I mean, it pretty much felt the same as my own, so what was the drama in helping Amy out when it’s something I did for myself on a regular basis? “Go with it. We don't have to get too crazy, just... test some waters, right?”

“God, I'm having sex with my best friend!” she babbled, distraught. “Why? Why are we doing this?”

“This isn't 'sex'!” I fired up, angrily tweaking some of her hair – and forcing another, wetter moan from her. “Amy, I... wow, you're so keyed up. You needed this, so let it happen, okay? Let it happen.”

Her eyes went to mine, wide and beseeching as if she had to tell me something important, but then they snapped closed as her head threw itself back. The sensations were too much. Ignoring how my own body was feeling about what my hand was doing to another female of the species, I kept at it, I shifted my position slightly so I was more comfortable. Amy lay on her back with her legs wide open, face turned away toward the wall as she moaned, sometimes letting out the occasional sob. When her back started arching and her tongue flitted out to wet parched lips, I knew all those little “what ifs” were shot to pieces by pure elation.

At some point, Amy's hand started moving as well. I had already started getting used to doing all the work, so when that happened it shocked me but then I laughed. Her actions were so clumsy and jerky, like a nerd at a school dance. I grabbed her hand and pushed it onto her to tell her to keep it up, then reached over and got a firm grip on the toy.

“AH!” she shouted when she felt it approaching. “No, wait, not yet!”

“Yes, yet,” I chided. “You're beyond ready for this.”

“No I'm not! I... ooh, it's gonna hurt, it's gonna split me open!”

“Maybe, maybe not. But do you trust me?” She nodded. “Good. Now... I want you to keep doing what you're doing, and don't scream or try to run away no matter what happens. Okay?” She nodded again. “Here we go.”

This part... I don't think I'll tell you about it. You can probably dream up a half-decent picture yourself, right? It was like that, with a tiny bit of “WHOA, too much” and some “OH SHHIIIT!” and even a “Why are you _doing this to meee?!”_ thrown in for good measure. Once I started going to town on her, I got over myself and put my brain into “work mode”, just trying to do a satisfactory job. So it wasn't that bad.

Afterward was weirder.

Covered in sweat, she rolled to look at me and smiled. I smiled back; she looked like she'd had plenty of fun. “Wow...”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “Feel any different?”

“Yeah... I mean... I mean not much, but a little..._ good..._ pretty good.”

I kissed her on the forehead in a mockery of a matronly gesture, and she giggled. We were both perspiring and breathing hard, but her a little more than me. Then she reached down to touch my hand where it was still holding the thing inside her and we both withdrew it together. So far, so not-horrible.

But then she pushed it against the crotch of my jeans. I rolled my eyes and said, “Cut it out.”

“No, no, I think it's your turn now.”

“That's okay, Blondie; I can take care of that all by my lonesome.”

“But it's my duty to repay you,” she said with mock seriousness, scrunching up her face and lowering her voice an octave. “For such a wonderful evening.”

“Dude, it's like one in the afternoon.”

“You know what I mean.” Then she shivered, and reached up with her clean hand (thank God) and pulled me into a hug. “Oh... oh, sorry, now I'm all clingy, what the hell?”

I shrugged, or as much as you can shrug while being hugged. “It happens sometimes, after. You suddenly crave a different kind of comfort.”

“Thank you,” she whispered directly into my ear, which sent chills down my spine no matter how much I didn't _want _it to send any chills anywhere. “I... I know I kind of pestered you into this, and you're probably grossed out by me now, but I... it was good, I mean it, and I... and I'm so glad it was with you! Not just relieved, but really, really glad! Honest! So... thanks.”

“Anytime, pal.”

And that was it. Maybe ten minutes later we cleaned her up, there was a lot of weirdness and nervous twitching, and we had a good laugh about how hers kind of looks like two pieces of pickled ginger fighting over a tiny beach ball. There weren't so much “coy glances” as there were “Not half an hour ago I watched that girl climax while lying on MY BED” and “Right now she's pushing buttons on a remote but before she was pushing a huge blue glowstick into my whatchamacallit!” glances.

I know you expected us to make out and fondle and grope and all that good stuff, but sorry, it just didn't work out that way. Better luck next time, voyeurs!

Although, I can't deny that it's hard to think of her the same way now that we've shared such a bizarre experience. One minute we were childhood best friends, and now... we're what, lovers? Does this count as that, or is it a one-time deal? Since she bailed about an hour ago, I've been asking myself over and over if I actually wanna bang Amy Abbott, but I keep saying “No, no way”. So I don't think so.

There's just one little problem. Before I washed off the dildo and put it back in the booksafe... okay, man is it even hard to write this down without having to say it out loud, but I um, I licked it. Don't go crazy and start labeling me all this shit, it wasn't supreme loss of control and I didn't rub it all over my face, I just licked it once to see what it was like. To see what she tasted like. DAMN that doesn't sound right! I've never tasted myself, that's kind of depraved, so I was like “Okay, she already got herself all over it so why not?” It was funky, and then I cleaned it up and stashed it, no biggie.

It did make me hot, though. Not burning hot, but it got my heart beating since I knew it was something unusual I was doing, something “sneaky” or whatever. I can't really be sure if it was because it was Amy, or another girl, or my best friend, or some combination of those elements. Don't ask me, I'm just a chick on happy pills.

One thing's for sure: this is all a little too intense for my sensibilities. I'm going to take a long shower and try to forget what I just went through before it's dinnertime.

What the hell did we do?

Forget that. Shower.

_Laynie _


	7. ♦ SEVEN ♦

Hey, it's me checking in. This is your brain on Laynie.

Things are good! You were probably wringing your hands waiting for me to update, and well, here it is: things are good. Hope that was the gory, unsightly muck you were hoping to unearth.

Amy and I (the lovebirds) have hung out several times since we helped her eschew her virginity. You like that, “eschew”? Word of the day. Anyhow, it's been fine, no weirdness or mess, just friends. In fact, she's been even nicer to me since then; not like she's got a “crush” on me but like she legitimately appreciated my help, the way she said. Score one for team Abbart.

Get it? Abbott/Hart. Cleverness abounds.

Fine, you caught me lying; things haven't been a shitshow, but life's not _quite_ a Zen Buddhist wonderland of peacefulness either. Trying to gloss over the bad parts like my mom would - _ugh_, there's a scary thought! Still, just... whatever, here's the weirdness.

We're out at Mama Joy's, we're leaving, da da da... here comes Ephram. Now, both of us have some lingering discomfort between us and the moody little Hottenstein, but we just wave at him and smile, and he waves and smiles back. No thing, right?

Except I chance a look over my shoulder at him once we pass, and he's kind of shaking his head out, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was then I noticed we were holding hands. We've done that lots of times, but what if... I mean, it's way stupid, but what if we were holding them in _some way _that looked more like _something else _than normally? There's no real way to test that, however, so it's just farting into the wind.

Another thing: undressing is weird. I mean, we don't get all hot and bothered and start drooling onto each other (or ourselves), it's just like... we're shyer around each other than before. We're talking almost no difference, like when you have a fever of 99 degrees; it barely even counts as being sick, but somehow you can't just totally shrug it off like it's nothing. So like, changing out of street clothes into jammies in front of each other. We hesitate, we blush, and then we laugh and get on with it. We've seen this stuff before, but now we have to think “That one time, when one of us was exposed, we kind of...”

But this is more than manageable or tolerable, it's like, next to nil. I'm so chill I'm a snow cone.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to think I could actually stick around here after the Summer is over. Which is crazy, since Summer's not even here yet! Why should I have to be the grown-up who decides these things? But if Amy and I stay simpatico, I guess there are worse things than spending one more year among the Peak County Morons- I mean _Miners_.

Oh, there’s Amy calling, good stuff. Later, Trusty Journal.

_Laynie_


	8. ♦ EIGHT ♦

CODE RED. This… this is the worst, and it’s a complete spasm of pulsating evil. Hang on.

Okay, I’m back; not starting a new entry, just had to shut the door. This can’t be written while any old motherfucker could walk in. Y’know, like my family.

Maybe a couple days passed since my last entry. It’s all good between me and Amy, right? A few hours ago, I go over to her house. We start a movie, we’re watching it, we get bored and start throwing cheese curls at each other. Amy’s Dad walks in and demands we pick up the food before “the rats think we’re running a bistro that caters to their clientele” or something snooty like that, classic Harold Abbott. Then he goes out to pick up Rose from some meeting or other of hers in which she's probably the only important person there. Bright is hanging with Ephram (STILL unprecedented and strange), which leaves just the two of us alone in the living room of an empty house.

We start picking up the food, laughing and joking about the movie in which Julia Roberts is way overacting but she’s still our hero, blah blah blah. You ready?

Our hands touch. Wait, hang on, I'm not done. They touch, and we had been shuffling around on the carpet in stocking feet, so we shock each other.

"Ow," says Amy as she puts the zapped middle finger in her mouth. Then she makes a face and goes, "Ew, cheese and carpet fuzzies are not a delicious combination."

"Idiot," I laugh. But I feel a little unsettled. They were _literal sparks_ we felt at each other's touch; just a byproduct of static electricity, but SPARKS, right? Such a cliché! I can't help but look at her flushed face; we were hunched over the carpet and all that, a little blood went to her head.

Don't laugh and start pointing fingers, but I swear to God I felt this rush of affection. Not like I wanted to "pop the question", just like... she's my best friend. I know I'd rather be hanging out with her and feeling carpet-volts than out partying with the cutest guy in all of Colorado. NOT because I'm gay, because I'm not, but I mean, in spite of her wet-blanketness and tendency to cry at the drop of a hat, she's still one of maybe five decent human beings I know.

All it took was for me to read that back to hear how I sound, so don't YOU start.

The rest of the night I'm smiling, smiling, all daffodils and sunshine, and Amy laughs at me a little here and there for being so smiley. I tell her I'm just in a good mood; it's not a lie, either. Everything has been such a psychedelic Technicolour dream since I drilled her. Whatever that might mean.

Then I'm about to head home. We've already made plans to study for this offensive calc test tomorrow night, maybe lay into a pizza and show both it and the test who's boss around here. That's when The Moment happens.

Not that the carpet thing wasn’t a “moment”, but it wasn’t _really; _it was just idiocy. This is different.

Amy’s sighing, "Okay, well... guess I'll see you then."

"Yep. Wild horses couldn't drag me away."

"Are there even wild horses anymore?" she mused. "Don't they have them all caught and bridled?"

I shrug. "Nah. It stands to reason that as many horses as there are, mankind would have missed a few."

"Hmm, probably. Well, don't worry, I won't be rounding up a few just to keep you away from me."

"Ooh, maybe you should," I tell her, letting my voice drop down into a creepy register. "Big Bad Laynie could gobble you up before you get to grandma's house."

"Right!" she giggled. "Because MY grandma wouldn't totally cream your ass once she found out!" Yeah, let me just say, if you don't know? Edna Harper is one tough old woman. I hope I'm half that awesome when I get to be a senior citizen.

"I might give her the slip," I growl, stalking around her and making her giggle more, covering her face with her hands as if she'd already giggled too much and was trying to keep some of it from leaking out so she could use it later. "You're not safe, you helpless little blonde. I'm a dangerous element."

“Ooh, I bet you are,” she repeats in the same tone, and we both laugh. Then we’re clasping hands, all hands, not just two. There’s pleasant arm-swinging, and huge grins, and I felt it.

There was a definite flutter.

We both kind of freeze for a second, then Amy pulls away, tucking her hair behind her ear. Why’s she all nervous now? The hair-ear thing is her go-to nervous gesture. Mine is to hook my thumbs in my front pockets and look away, which I am also doing. Then I give her a little wave and a “see ya” and I’m gone.

You’re already saying “but that’s nothing”, I just know you are. I’m not so sure. Do I want it to be anything or not? Even _that _is unclear. I’m pretty much going crazy.

Whatever, it’s not like it would be a big deal. And you’re probably telling me it would be because then I’d be a lesbian, but that’s just it; I don’t really care if I turn out to be a lesbian. I think they’re pretty commendable folk for the most part. It’s just… Amy’s my best friend already, we’ve known each other since like, the Big Bang. It would be too weird if we hooked up. Wrong, and twisted, and beyond confusing. I’m pretty sure neither of us could handle it – especially not Amy, because she _IS _hung up on stuff like “lesbians” and “gayness” and “heteronormativity” and yadda yadda yadda. Part of her is still waiting for Colin to come back from the grave so they can get married and have 2.5 children and live Typically Ever After.

I… I sound like I’m losing it. Maybe I am losing it, maybe Zoloft is sending me off the deep end. I’m going to sleep. I have to sleep, right now. Goodnight.

_Laynie_


	9. ♦ NINE ♦

I’m not losing it.

I was in Mama Joy’s by myself, loafing around and bored. Bored to the point where I had folded six napkins into paper footballs and was working on a seventh when I looked up to see Amy heading my way. I think she’d been hanging out with Ephram, maybe with her parents instead, but she didn’t say. What she _did_ say when she slid into the booth across from me was, “Can you get me a dildo?”

Needless to say, I spat coffee all over the tabletop. While we were both cleaning up with a few of my napkin-footballs, I hissed, “What the hell, Amy? Who leads off with a request like that?”

“Sorry,” she said earnestly. “But… well, it was either that, or I wouldn’t have been able to ask at all. But seriously… can you?”

“Am I supposed to be your ‘connection’ or something? God, Ames, go into Denver and find a shop and-“

“I can’t do that!” she protested. “It’s so… they’d take one look at me and kick me out for being too cute and innocent!”

I smiled as I piled up the soaking napkins on a dry one. “You have a pretty high opinion of yourself.”

“Cut it out. Come on, seriously, can you get one for me? I’d be so eternally grateful, you don’t even _know._”

“What’s with this all of a sudden?” I leaned in and lowered my voice. “Back to me being your connection… that wasn’t supposed to be a drug-pusher arrangement, you know that, right? Like ‘the first one is free’ or whatever. I thought we were getting rid of your virginity and that’s where it ended.”

“We were. I just…” Here she gave me a bashful smile. “I guess I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. So… I mean, I know it’s weird, but I’m too nervous to get one for myself. Please? I’m totally gonna give you the money for it, though, don’t worry about that part.”

Humoring her for the moment, I stared down at the tabletop as if lost in thought, then said, “Okay, what kind?”

“Huh?”

“What kind do you want? Ribbed, studded, spiraled... colour, size? Jelly or hard plastic? Wood? Maybe _glass_, even? Vibration or gyration? One with a rabbit-style clitoral stimulation attachment?”

“Lay-nieee!” she whined.

“_Anal_ stimulation attachment? You down for some dee-pee?” Having too much fun now, I ignored her scandalized face and went on, “They do make the kind that slip easily into a harness so you can turn it into a strap-on. It’s like two toys in one.”

“What are you, their spokeswoman?” she snapped, folding her arms over her chest and looking out the window angrily. “You didn’t have to make fun of me for asking, but hey, that’s fine. Treat me like a kid.”

“You _are _a kid,” I told her with a slight smirk. “One somebody let loose in a candy store. But you don’t know what you want. We can’t complete this transaction unless you throw up some parameters.”

“Get off my back. I’m serious here, I really want one. I mean, maybe I won’t even use it, but we can’t keep passing _your _baton back and forth like we’re in some kind of sexy relay race.”

That one made _me _blush. I hadn’t actually used it since she had; the concept was strange. I knew eventually I’d get over it, but for now I couldn’t wrap my head around putting something inside me that had been inside my best friend. WAY too queer. “Yeah. I m-mean, do you maybe just want the one I’ve got and I can visit my friends at St Margret's for another one? Probably our cheapest option.”

Amy bit her lip and stared out the window for a really long time. Then, out of left field, she whispered, “They really make those out of _glass?_”

“Dork,” I giggled. “Come on, forget all about this. Just use your hand for a while. Why are you trying so hard to be all 'pro' about it when you're _not _a pro?”

“Because I liked it!” Her cheeks were glowing, but she was determined to convince me. It was adorable, really. “Because it was so good I can't stop thinking about it! And b-because... because I still can't touch myself without feeling all nauseous, okay? There, I said it. I'm scared of my own snatch.”

I blinked at her, totally fazed. “You're saying it's _easier _for you to use power tools than just pet the kitty? You are bass-ackwards in the brain, Abbott.”

“I don't need your ridicule, Laynie. I just need your help.”

“Okay.” My mind was still blown, but I couldn't deny that there wasn't a single joke lingering in her expression. “Okay, if you want one that bad, I'll _give_ you mine. Merry Christmas.”

“I don't want yours, I want one of my own. Didn't we already discuss this?”

“Fine, so you wanna hit the big city this weekend and go into an adult boutique?” By this point I let that hard edge fall around my words because I was sick of her fussing until she got her way. The thing about Controlling-Amy you have to understand is that all it takes is showing her you're done putting up with it to bring her back down to earth. “Let's do it. Let's do it Saturday.”

“I told you, I'm not-”

“I will go in with you,” I cut her off. “Yes, I will, I will help you buy Baby's First Vibrator. But I'm not gonna go by myself and be the _only _one who looks like some huge slut. Either we both fall on that grenade or neither of us does, but I'm not letting you hide under the bed while I do your dirty work – cos this is some _really dirty work_.”

“But what will that look like?!” she protested. “They'll think we want it so we can... y'know, play together!”

“Yeah? And what did we do last time?”

Okay, remember that staring contest we had in my room right after I put on the Sigur Rós album? Yeah, this was an actual staring contest; we were both doing our best death glares, teeth grinding and lips all pursed. It was probably hilarious to the other patrons of Mama Joy's. Then Amy snapped, “Fine, we both go,” and popped up from the table and breezed out the door.

She was mad and wanted to throw her little tantrum, but she also didn't want to yell at me so much that I changed my mind. Therefore, it was time for her to go lock herself in her car and scream at the steering wheel about how excruciating I was being.

That's right; we girls have ourselves a date with dildos. Two days from now. How do I get myself into these messes? I'll be sure and let you know how it turns out... if we survive the trip there, the actual experience, _and _the trip back. Probably asking too much from Jesus, but hey, it could happen.

_Laynie_


	10. ♦ TEN ♦

Oh my God, that was so hilarious. I've been sitting here in my room, laughing my ass off for like, an hour, and I finally decided maybe I should write it down so I can continue to laugh about it in the future when I reread this.

Amy knocks on my door. I open it. Before I even get a chance to pull some casual greeting out of my ass, she's like, “So after looking at all the online reviews, it looks like this place Claudia's Collection has the highest quality and lowest prices.”

“Huh?” I mumble.

“Sex toys.” She waves a printout under my nose. “They have everything – okay, not everything, but most of the decent stuff and some stuff I still don't quite understand. And there was this other store that like, charges thirty bucks for a stupid bottle of lube, so I was like, no way – and the one where they have the 'viewing rooms'? Please, that is _über-_skeevy!”

“Okay,” I yawn, scratching my ass through my PJ’s. Hey, nobody ever once accused me of rolling out of bed looking like Miss America. “Before I go upstairs and grab my wallet, do you want another look at mine so you can actually comparison-shop, or are you gonna come home with an eighteen-inch double-ender that no sane person would buy on their first trip?”

“Don't worry, I am totally on top of this,” she said with an endearing-yet-determined smile. “I st-”

“You stayed up all night doing research. That is what you were going to say, isn't it?”

Finally, I got her to blush and deflated some of her buoyancy, but it only lasted a few seconds before she grinned. “If you stop ruining my fun, I promise to buy you coffee and doughnuts.” Which, of course, made me grin as well, and soon thereafter we were off.

Amy drives some kind of silver SUV. I always know exactly what kind it is when we're in it, and then as soon as we're not I forget. I could give a flying shit about cars, really. It has a decent CD player with one of those jacks to plug in an iPod, but we don't have the right thingy to plug into it... whatever, good old-fashioned compact discs get us by just fine. Even if Amy has some inhumane need to put on ear-bleeding stuff like Seal or (ugh) Aqua. Seriously, Aqua wasn't even legitimate music during the decade in which they were popular.

Everything was peaches and cream (or jelly and glaze after the doughnut run) until we got to the place. I mean, we barely talked about it all the way there, since we had a clear goal at the end of it and could allow our minds to wander to other matters, like TV and celebrity gossip and Ephram and Bright and school and other junk. Then we were parking behind Claudia's Collection and the purpose of our weekend excursion smacked us upside the head.

“I'm really doing this, aren't I?” Amy breathed with a touch of nervousness. “I'm gonna go in there and buy a piece of rubber that I'm gonna cram up my-”

“Relax,” I shushed her. “You're giving me a headache with all your back-and-forth. Let's just go in there and look around; and hey, nobody's forcing you to buy anything. We can come out of there with a single flavoured condom and consider the trip a roaring success.”

“Flavoured condoms? Why would anybody make... wait, never mind, I got the mental image just now.”

The inside of it actually smelled like apples. Not sure what that was about, but hey, as long as it didn't smell like lube and sweat! The second thing I noticed after the smell was that it was kind of dark, but not pitch black, and that the carpet was a little threadbare but not dirty. All in all, a halfway-decent sex shop.

“Welcome to Claudia's,” said a middle-aged woman with short, dyed-red hair who was seated behind the counter. She didn't look up from her magazine. “I'm Claudia. If you need any help just let me know.”

“Thank you,” Amy said with a little curtsy. No, I am dead freaking serious: _she curtsied._ “We're just browsing.”

“Suit yourselves.”

We both spent about five or ten minutes walking around in circles and checking the place out. They really did have just about everything I mentioned to Amy and some other stuff that went over my head, but it was all good fun. Finally, trying not to be too brazen about it, she turned to me holding up this black shaft with white stripes and whispered, “Well?”

“Dude, no.”

“Why not?”

“It's a prostate-prodder.” She just stared at me blankly, so I rolled my eyes and said, “For the especially-curious male of the species.”

“Come on,” she said with a slight smile. “It's- whoa, wait, I read about these last night, but they were anal toys so I kind of blazed on past. Guys really...” She blinked many times in rapid succession before putting it back on the velvet cushion (really, velvet cushions, like they were on display in the Smithsonian). “Wow. Wow, that's... that's an interesting concept.”

“Fascinating, Dr Johanson. Shall we move on to something you can actually use?”

Here, Amy squirmed. She was already squirmy, so I didn't think much about it... until she opened her mouth and asked, “You were in there, right? What do you think I need?”

“Whoa, whoa!” I said, then gulped to coat my bone-dry throat (no puns, please, I'd appreciate it) then went on, “Amy, I was not _in there_, I- Jesus, are you trying to mess with my mind? I pretty much closed my eyes, gritted my teeth and hoped I didn't miss and start trying to penetrate your belly button!”

“But you know what you wanted out of yours – that has to help me out here in some way!”

“I know I got it in exchange for a Playgirl,” I told her in an even quieter voice, as if the teachers had silently followed us to the sex shop like evil Russian spies in a Bond flick. “I got the Playgirl for my leftover Pizza Hut. It's a total barter system, just like prison.”

Amy sighed, then her eyebrows knitted. “You really got a whole vibrator for one lousy porno mag?”

“It wasn't all that lousy,” I told her with a wink. “Primo issue; wish I still had it. And besides, the girl who traded me for it had at least three toys, and Old Blue wasn't as adventurous as... the pink one. Which looked a lot like that one there.”

She followed my line of sight, then whipped around to block it from her view. Beads of sweat formed on her brow. “Uhh... yeah, I'm not even allowed to see that one. Moving along to, uh, this?”

I glanced at it. “Oh, too short.”

“This?”

“WHOA, horsey! What did I say about the eighteen-incher? That one would come out your mouth!”

“You said the other one was too short,” she muttered as she put it back. The way it flopped and wiggled as she did so gave me the queasies, and I felt the bear claw trying to stir up trouble in my stomach.

“Fine, I can see I'm going to have to take control.” Her tiny giggle made me blush. “That's not how I- come on, don't be sick; I'm here at your behest, you big chicken.”

“You're right, you're right,” she giggled. “Just lay it on me. I m-mean, your opinion, tell me what to buy! Damn, why did I think this was a good idea again?”

“Okay.” I didn't show it to her yet, but I had spotted it. Time to cover my bases before I made my pitch. “How much money do you have to blow on your sexual health?”

Her lips silently mouthed the words “sexual health” in disbelief before she cleared her throat and said, “I dunno, fifty bucks? Somewhere in that area.”

“Perfect.” Then I turned her around and pointed her straight at it. “This is what you need: the Voracious Violet Variety Pack.”

“Oh my God,” she blurted, slapping a hand over her mouth. “Laynie, no, that's like... that's seven components of beaver-busting that I _so _am not ready for!”

“This is pretty much a straight-up vibrator,” I went on, pointing at the sleek silvery rod. “And you also have this basic boy-shaped dong. Then, when you're feeling a little more courageous, you can use these jelly sleeves to switch up the feeling of the vibrator. And these-”

“Those are things we won't be studying until next term,” she hissed at me, overwhelmed. “I'm still working on 'basic dong'. What's an _un_-basic dong?!”

“Excuse me.”

We both jumped when we saw Claudia standing over us with a semi-bored, semi-amused expression. The amount of green eyeshadow she had caked on ought to be illegal, I swear! “Hmm?” Amy managed to say without opening her mouth.

“I couldn't help overhearing that you guys are about to shit bricks. Maybe I can help.”

“N-no,” she stuttered, already backing toward the door. “I, uh, this isn't for me, I'm- do you know how we can get to Bennigan's? We were supposed to meet some guys at Bennigan's but wound up here, and I-”

“Oh, save it,” I snapped at her. “You're such a bad liar that you couldn't sell it, anyway.”

“First dildo for her,” Claudia guessed, “and you're hand-holding.”

“Right,” I sighed.

Amy hesitated, then rushed up to the counter and whispered, “Please don't tell my dad I'm here. He'd have kittens. He'd have a whole litter of kittens, maybe a litter of litters!”

“You over sixteen?” she asked skeptically.

“Sadly, yes,” I said. “This is how mature she's gotten so far.”

“Fine, it's not my problem, anyway. So you want to have a little solo fun but you don't want anybody but your best friend to know about it, that about the lay of the land?” Then she smiled wider. “Unless you two are...”

“No, no,” I laughed, deciding she didn't need to know I'd helped Amy out a little last time. “I'm here for amoral support, that's all.”

“Laynie's is just a really simple blue one, and that's all I want for now,” Amy said cautiously, still not sure she could trust a stranger with such private matters. “But... well, now sh-she's telling me I should get this crazy kit, and it's way too much, right? I mean, what do you think?”

“The kit's great,” the old woman told her with this kind of complete ease that I'd kill to pull off. “Plenty of satisfied customers, beginner, intermediate and advanced. Unless you need some really specific kind of torture, this will be all you'll ever need to buy.”

“But that!” Amy said, poking the rabbit sleeve. “I don't even know what that _does_, so how could I consider bringing it into my home?”

The woman frowned at her. “It ain't a loaded firearm, cookie! Tell me, you got a precocious little sister who might go digging through your stuff and find it?”

“No...”

“Then who gives a rat's patootie?”

“Come on, I don't- what _are_ these things?” I couldn't help but stifle a laugh behind my hand when I saw her holding up the anal beads. I mean, if she knew where those normally went... “I just don't know, I...”

“Listen, dollface, here's what you do.” She took the beads away from Amy, replaced them on the cushion, then folded her hands on the countertop. “If you're really short on money, then buy a dong and be done. However, judging by those clothes and that Prada bag I'd say you didn't come in here with anything less than fifty dollars to squander – maybe you even got a hundred. Am I right?”

Amy slouched. This crazy lady totally had her pegged. She was my new heroine.

“So what you do is, you take these things home, open the box, take everything that's not the vibrator or the dong and put them in an old purse. Zip it closed, hide it, forget about it. Then you've got two standard toys to play with to your heart's desire.”

“But-”

“Then,” she went on doggedly, “one day in the distant future when you get sick of the same old same-old, you already got options. Saves you a lot of money, especially when just the dong would normally cost you a third of this entire kit. Tell me, sweetie, is there some boy you're interested in?”

Amy glanced at me. I felt her pain; she wasn't actually interested in any specific boy at the moment. Out of her two previous relationships, one died and the other was back in rehab. “Not right now, but... I m-mean, maybe someday.”

The woman actually seemed to sniff out her “somewhat-damaged goods” aura and nodded. “Someday, sure. See this? It's a ring for his thing. There's more here than just solitaire, right? Like I said, all you'll ever need and some stuff you might not, but this way you won't have to pretend to be looking for Bennigan's anytime soon.”

We both saw the wisdom in that. It had taken a lot of balls (haha, I'm so funny) for Amy to force herself into that shop even one time. Saving herself from the headache of future visits seemed like reason enough for her to plunk down the extra change. “So... I guess that makes sense. I don't _have _to use those weird cherry-looking things.”

“And if-and-or-when you change your mind, there's a little book in there that gives you some useful tips for each toy,” she told her with a kind smile. “I mean, everybody's gotta start somewhere.”

“But it's so much stuff, and... man, whatever that is, I _know _I won't use it. Would you use it?”

“Would, could, did. It's a lot of fun.” Then she her smile turned wry. “Just make sure you grease the wheels for that. And you probably won't need it for a while yet, so like I said, dry storage.”

“Grease the wheels... oh yeah, I need some of that. Any recommenda-”

“Water-based,” she told her, handing her a mid-size bottle. “The other stuff can ruin some toys, even though I think Voracious Violet is okay with both. And trust me, get a bottle _at least _this big, otherwise you'll be back here every other month for refills and it'll be a waste of gas.”

Amy was looking at all the things on the cushion. Finally, with a shaking hand, she picked up the dong and hefted it. “This is the kind that doesn't vibrate, it's just solid through. Right?” She picked up the chrome companion in her other hand, looking between them. “I... I guess it would be nice to have options. As long as I'm doing this, I might as well go all-out, no sense coming all the way down here just to get one of those lame fingertip thingies.”

“Hey, don't knock 'em,” she laughed. “They do the job. Not much of one, but enough if you're strapped for cash. Speaking of straps... you sure you girls aren't...?”

“I'm about to vomit on you,” I told the woman point-blank, just to keep her from bringing it up again.

“Okay, I asked for that; minding my own business from now on. What's your poison, angel?”

Amy looked at the bottle of lube, then at the kit, and then over at a really simple dildo that was almost exactly like the one I had. Then she swallowed hard and said, “H-how much total for the whole kit and kaboodle?”

She looked so shifty, man, like a druggie or a guy in his first strip club. The woman kept trying to tell her to relax, and she kept smiling and nodding while rivers of sweat ran down her head. I tried not to laugh, I really, really tried, but the woman kept looking at me and grinning like we were sharing a private joke – and we kind of were. My best friend is so ridiculous!

“I cannot believe you did that to me,” she accused the minute we got back to the car.

“Did what?” I snickered.

“Conned me into buying a thousand-and-one stimulation aids! 'A ring for his thing'? What guy do you know who would actually put one of those on?”

“Several A&M guys,” I said easily.

Lots of blinking came to pass, followed by her exasperated, “FINE! Okay, fine, whatever, I already bought it so now let's just get out of here!”

We were at least fifteen miles down the road before she would talk to me again, and even then she was all snippy. I was more than content to listen to the radio until she got over herself, anyway. Oh, the whole thing had me rolling... the next part wasn't so funny, though.

Which I will have to tell you about after dinner; Mom's really been on my case about being ready when dinner is ready the past few days. Old shrew. Excusez-moi.

_Laynie_


	11. ♦ ELEVEN ♦

Full tummy and empty mind. Back to writing in the Chronicle Of Laynie.

We were maybe five minutes out from the Everwood city limits when she broke down and at long last said, “Thank you.”

“Huh? Wow, total one-eighty.”

“Don't be a dick. I mean it, thanks for helping me out, even if you were totally evil back there. At least you came with.”

Smiling and declining to fully acknowledge her thanks/apology, I said, “So... you got what you wanted. Any plans for using this stuff?”

“No,” she sighed, then took a few more deep breaths to slow her pulse. “Not yet. I figure I'll just... y'know, look at them for a few days, get used to the idea that I own something like this. _Then _I'll get freaky.”

“It's not freaky,” I laughed. “Everybody uses them. There's no ball gags or electrified nipple clamps in this bag of tricks, so I think you're in relatively safe waters.”

“Sometimes I could honestly swear you make this stuff up on the spur of the moment.”

“All true. Some of my old classmates were into the real stuff.”

“_Nipple clamps?!_ Seriously? Geez, that doesn't even sound hot, not at all!”

“Not to you and me. Different strokes for different folks.” Now I couldn't help but grin. “Wanna know what kind of strokes I'm into?”

“Yes!”

That floored me. In all of my years of hanging out with Amy Abbott, I've come to be able to predict almost everything she could possibly say in reaction to any given situation with about 99% accuracy. This one time I hit the remaining per cent, and it was about something this intimate? I almost wet myself. “Wait... I mean, really? _You _wanna know what _I_ do?”

“Of course!” she snapped, as if I should have been expecting this. “God, I even let you do it for me last time, so do you really think I have any idea what I'm doing? Please, tell me how you get started, how to set it up, how to sit, how... breathing exercises, I don't know!”

I was smiling, I was blushing, I was staring out at the road whizzing by. “Uhh... well, let's see. Never told anybody how I do it. I guess I've never given it a lot of thought; when I'm doing that I put my body on auto-pilot, y'know?”

“Not really!”

Even just thinking about what I was about to tell her put me in the mood to act out the instructions, if you catch my drift. It was really weird, made me feel like somebody was turning me inside-out or something. “Well... okay, so first I make sure I'm alone... then I put on the music. Sometimes I light candles, sometimes it's like, who cares if there's candles?”

“Good, good,” she grunted, gripping the steering wheel with grim determination as if we were outlining the plans for breaking into the First National Bank of Somewheresville. “Candles and Coldplay. Then what?”

“Lube, lots of lube,” I told her nervously. “Sometimes a condom.”

“You can put condoms on these things? Why?”

“So it doesn't get you pregnant,” I snapped impatiently. “Come on, try and use both halves of your brain for once; it makes clean-up easier, and if you use a ribbed one it can change the sensation. But you won't have that problem, Miss Jelly-Sleeves.”

“Eep.” She really “eep”ed, it was cute.

“Then I... um, are you sure you care about this?” She didn't answer. “Then I might start touching myself without it, just a little. Play with my tits. Eventually, when I'm starting to feel, y'know, loose or whatever, I pick up the thing and... go to town.”

Now Amy was looking a smidgen more like I looked; ashamed that we were talking about this in such fine detail. “Okay. But I want to know more than 'go to town'; sorry, I know it's overshare but I really don't know how this happens.”

"God, there's only so many ways it can go! You open your legs, you move the tip of it around until you find the only hole wide enough to admit it and then you put it in! If you're in the mood for the shakes you make it shake you, if not then you don't, and just like that old Who song you go in, and out, and in, and out... and then you speed up when it's almost over, and then you make some silly noises you hope nobody ever hears, and then you probably need a big glass of water! Is that more like it?"

Now both of us were panting. Like, really panting, like we were doing it right there in the car. I hadn't even realized I was half-shouting at her until afterward. Amy whispered, "Yeah... yeah, that's more like it. That's what you did to me."

“For God's sake, Amy, I'm not sure how much more I can help you handle this stuff! What, do you need to watch me, too?”

“Maybe I should.”

“I...” But I couldn't come up with much else to say. There needed to be a change in tactic. “Listen. I don't think this is anything I can keep helping you with, okay? It's... making me uncomfortable.”

Amy swallowed. “Me too. I mean it, it really is freaking me out the way things are going, but all I know for sure is that... that you really made me feel amazing that night.”

“Stop it!”

“I'm not trying to say I liked it because I'm in love with you or anything bad,” she went on hurriedly, a tear sliding down the cheek closest to me. Probably the other one, too, but I couldn't see it well enough by her reflection in the window to tell. “But it felt great. You really knew what to do to me, I felt so safe because I knew you care about me-”

“Not like _that _I don't! Sorry, but I can't be your fluffer anymore, I just can't, okay? Time for the baby bird to leave the nest and fly all on her lonesome!”

“But I need your help, Laynie, I really do!” A tiny sob slipped out before she whispered, “I know I'm a pain in the butt, but just... one more time? Show me how to do this so I can do it for myself and then I'll never bother you about this again, I swear!”

“I am not a whore, Ames!” I shouted. “I can't just put out for you! You're acting like this is no big deal for me, like I _masturbate my friends _all the time, well, news flash – I _don't!_ You are the ONLY friend I have ever done that for, and it was an extreme circumstance! I- I don't wanna touch- I can't do that, it's too much, too much for us to do together, okay?!”

Suddenly we were at my house. Yeah, neither of us noticed we were there, but deep down I realized we'd been parked in the driveway for a few minutes. We both blinked, and Amy was the one who whispered, “How did we get here?”

Instead of answering, I got out and slammed the door. It was five seconds later that Amy came flying out of the SUV after me and said, “Wait! Laynie, don't go off like that, please?”

“It's okay,” I told her shakily, unable to really look at her. “You're cool, we're cool. Just... can you give me a little space for a while?”

“I don't want space,” Amy protested desperately. “I can't have this mess things up with us, not like Tommy did, I... that was already one mistake too many, I can't let there be another one.”

“You tried to get me to _fuck_ you!” I told her bluntly, and she grimaced and looked away. “It's... how am I supposed to even _start _to list the many reasons that is not acceptable? And what, you wanted to watch me do it to myself so you can learn how? That's crazy! Just look it up on ScrewTube or something!”

“It's not that I wanna... watch you do it,” she said – in a _very_ unconvincing manner.

“Yes you do!” I gasped. I gasped again when she didn't deny it. “You already told me that you liked me being in the room, that it heightened your pleasure or whatnot, and now you wanna watch me ream myself with one of your new toys!”

“NO!” she protested, shaking her golden locks from side to side. “No, you were gonna use Old Blue! Wasn't that the whole point of me getting my own equipment?”

At that, I took a few quick breaths and ran my hand through my sporty black hair. Oh yeah, I got it cut again; did I leave that out? It's a total Demi from _Ghost_, but less boyish. Guess there's other stuff more important than stylists taking center stage. “Okay. Look, I'm sorry, but I can't do this anymore. Not this stuff. Is that clear? Am I getting through to Apollo 13 up there?”

“But-”

“I _can't._ You have to go it alone.”

“But I need this.” Her voice dropped a lot as she leaned in with a this kind of lost, confused look in her eyes, like this was scaring her way worse than it scared me. Which was already “to the max”. “You're my best friend, and I need your help with this, okay?”

“You can't _have _my help with this. That is all there is to it. Face it, Ames, we all gotta grow up sometime.”

For a long while, she stood there, all tense like she wanted to keep fighting with me, and then she kind of rubbed the end of her nose and said, “I know. I'll try by myself. I'm so scared I'm gonna mess it up.”

“That's impossible. Even if you don't get it right the first time, nothing's going to change forever. You'll just be forced to start over is all.”

Suddenly she had me in a crushing hug. “I'm sorry. Thanks for putting up with my crazy ass.”

“Yeah.”

That was the last I saw of her. I mean, it was earlier today, so obviously that's not some huge scary statement and nobody's gonna call in search and rescue. I'm just saying- hang on, phone. It's Amy. WTF?

_Laynie_


	12. ♦ TWELVE ♦

What did I just do? I don't know what I did. Somebody swoop in and define it for me, because this all just took another step outside the box of normalcy and I'd at least like a good way to convey it to the shrink when they're locking me in a padded cell. What in the fuck just happened here?

Sorry. I didn’t mean to start this entry into the Captain’s Log sounding so schizo. Let’s start examining _why _I feel schizo, and then I’ll go back to having an existential crisis.

As soon as I answered Amy's call I heard sobbing, which, in case you might find this information useful someday, is the worst possible way to start any phone conversation. I'm already thinking Bright got in another accident, or her grandma had a heart attack or something. So I say, “Amy, what's wrong? What happened?”

“I... I can't...”

“Amy, talk to me, come on. Are you okay? Do you need an ambulance or something?”

“No, no,” she sniffled, catching onto why I sounded frantic. “Sorry, I- I was already crying, I didn't mean for it to sound like- I'm sorry.”

“Okay,” I sigh, still on edge. “Then what's the sitch?”

“I can't do it, Laynie. Please don’t be mad at me for calling, I tried, I tried so hard, and I kept d-dropping it, and I h-hurt myself a little... oh God, I'm some kind of invalid, I can't even pleasure myself, how am I ever supposed to make a boy happy?!”

Stomach gurgling, I quietly crept to my door, shut it, locked it. “Okay, take a few deep breaths.” While I talked, I moved my boombox to the crack under the door and turned it on at medium volume. It's a little trick I've learned; it makes the parents think I have it in its usual spot on full-blast. My own personal Cone of Silence. “Shoot me if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I'm gonna guess you're trying out your most recent purchases.”

“Trying and _failing_. I don't understand how I can be this bad at it!”

“Maybe you should put that stuff aside for right now and we can go hang out somewhere. What are you doing right now?”

“Trying to... to put it in again, I- _urgh, dammit!”_

“AMY!” I gasp, instantly feeling my face bursting with that cherry-tomato redness. “Can't you wait until I'm off the phone?!”

“I'm some kind of sex-retard, I swear! What's going to happen to me?!”

Gritting my teeth, I snapped, “Don't say 'retard', it's a slur. And you're pushing this too much, you know that, right? You'll end up a wreck if you try to merge into the fast lane before you're ready.”

“I know, you told me already, I just... I thought I could just be all cool and start in, because it was so much fun before, but every time I try I get all nervous and... and I'm so dumb.”

“Calm the fuck down,” I ordered. “Take a deep breath.” She did. “Okay, listen. I'm gonna tell you what you're gonna do, and then I'll hang up and you will be absolutely fine. Understand?”

“No, I won't, I'll mess it up again, I know I'll choke, I'll fumble around like I have been and probably end up perforating a kidney.”

I couldn't help but crack a smile at that. “Stop. Now are you listening? Good. You have to open your legs as wide as you can. Relax every single muscle below your waist; at least, you should before it gets in, after that it doesn't matter what's relaxed and what isn't.”

“Okay...”

“Now put it in position. Hold it there. Are you starting to feel nervous yet?”

“Of course I feel nervous! Don't you see what I'm about to do?”

What I wanted to say was “No, and thank God”, but I didn't; instead, “Just put the tip of it in. Hold it right around the middle like it's a flashlight. Got it?” The unholy sound coming out of the phone told me she did. “O-oh. Right, you got it. Now all you have to do is keep pushing it in and you'll be golden.”

“Wait!” she gasped out. “W-wait, you can't leave me, y-you have to help me through it!”

“You got this!” I hissed, trying to ignore the way my pulse was speeding up, the itchy feeling in the center of my pelvis. “Go forth and have much fun, girlfriend!”

“_Please! I need you!”_

“W-what is _that _supposed to mean?” I couldn't help but sputter.

“I need your help so bad! Just hearing you on the other end of the phone, it... it makes this... _nnhhh,_ Laynie, don't make me beg!”

I swear to God it was the combination of the moan and the “begging” part, but yeah. Yeah, I guess I won't try to lie since lying to yourself if one of the great cardinal sins, and this journal is to myself: at that point I became really turned on.

So sue me! All freaking day had been about nothing but dildos and their uses, I was bound to end up jonesing sooner or later! What was I supposed to do, go take a cold shower while my best friend cried like a televangelist from something that was supposed to be enjoyable?

“It's okay,” I told her hollowly as I began to twitch my legs together, started breathing faster. “Nothing's wrong; I'll stay right here, just do what you're doing.”

“Thank you!” she bleated, which was worse than the begging. “God, Laynie... I... _mhh,_ it's so hard to keep my hand on it when all I w-wanna do is- is lie back and take it!”

“Well, you can't exactly do that, so there's no use whining. Just... do your best. Nobody's judging.”

At this point she started making more noise than sense, so I won't bother telling you about that. What I will tell you is that as the time wore on, she sounded less afraid and more unhinged – not quite giddy, no way, just, y'know... like she was getting ploughed. And as I heard more and more of that, I felt more and more aroused. There was no freaking way to head it off, the sounds coming out of that phone were so erotic and unrehearsed! It was like listening to amateur porn, only better because she really didn't have any control over herself. It left me speechless. I mean, I kept saying stuff like “You're doing fine, keep it up, that's it”, but I couldn't think to save my life at that point.

The other thing that happened is I began to sweat. I began to writhe and pitch back and forth, making some pretty huge effort to ignore my bodily reactions to her pleasure-soaked voice. Finally, when I realized I was actually rubbing myself through my jeans when I hadn't consciously started doing it that I let out a nervous laugh and said, “Okay, you really... _really _seem to have the hang of it! I'm just gonna-”

“You can't!” she grunted, all raw need and recklessness. “I'll... I'll be done in a minute, I swear, I can feel it! Oh, it's so amazing, I love this!”

Now I was the one crying. Crying as I slid a hand down the front of my jeans. “Yeah? You love it? We made the right choice?”

“Yes! _Yes,_ God yes, it's the best fifty bucks I ever spent!”

Vulgarity time: I had never been so wet in my whole worthless life. It was embarrassing. Nobody else in the great wide world knew about it, and I was embarrassed for _myself_ to know. That's how bad it was. “Wh-which one are you using? Colour me curious.”

“The dong!” she gasped. “I... I wasn't quite ready for any vibrations, you know? So I... _mmhh, _wow, I can't even imagine what this would be like if it were moving on its own!”

I let out a little gasp of my own. She never heard me; she was making such a racket that I bet all the neighbors were wondering who was watching a primal scream therapy video. I felt one of my socks slip down to halfway off as my legs moved at crazy angles, as I writhed on my side, as I... did exactly what you know I was doing. Because I was. I was doing it while on the phone with my best friend.

“It's okay,” I told her one more time, almost telling myself instead of her. “Just... just l-let it go! I'm right here, I'm right here with you!”

“I'm sorry, Laynie! I... _hahah,_ I'm sorry I dragged you into this! You're so good to me!”

“You're so good...” I stopped there. Poor timing, but Amy didn't notice.

“Laynie! Laynie, I... I'm coming! This is it, this is it!”

At that point I abandoned all pretense – well, in my actions, not my words. Going full-tilt now, I rolled onto my back and arched, stretching out the crotch of my Mudds so badly they might look like I let a dude wear them around for a while. “Yeah, Amy! Do it, Amy! Just let it take you, don't fight back, just... just accept!”

“Laynie!” she was screaming. She was _screaming my name._ That's not right. That's so beyond evil that it should send both of us to Hell, but... but so was what I was doing. Why start playing the blame game now? _“Laynie!_ LaaayNIE!”

Speaking of fingers, I knew I was going to finish when she finished. I was counting on it, because if she finished first and I was still going... she'd catch me in the act. Since by then I was _way _past the Point Of No Return, I sped up, I pushed, I coaxed, I abused. “Go! Go, you're amazing, you can do it! Do it for me!”

And it goes on from there.

Skipping past the obvious caveman sounds we reenacted, we both fell down tired. Lots of heavy breathing, lots of nothing else. When I finally pulled my hand out of my jeans and looked at it, I cried a lot harder than I had in a long, long time... but I didn't make a sound. Silent. Ninja-crying.

I really did it; we did that. While my boombox was blaring with the sounds of Dream Theater, I committed a cardinal sin in the book of friendship; I tainted us by getting off on what she was doing. I touched myself while my friend was touching herself. What kind of horrible person was I turning into?

“Oh God,” she finally panted, a slight laugh to her voice. “That... that was so goood... that was _EPIC._”

“Yeah,” I managed to get out in a way that sounded like I was laughing too, even though I wasn't. Not laughing, not laughing at all.

“Thank you so much,” she told me. “Laynie... oh wow, thank you, I really needed that.”

“From me?”

She was quiet for a moment, then let out a tiny giggle. “I... okay, I deserve that. I didn't mean to call out your name at the end like you were doing it to me, I just got carried away. That's... not a big deal, is it?”

“It might be,” I told her honestly. I wasn't ready to reveal what I had done. NO WAY. I'm not now, nor will I ever be ready for that. “But I get it, you... weren't really in control. I remember what it was like.”

“Wow, I'm so glad I learned how to do this! It's gonna be so much fun!” Then she gulped and I heard this worry creep into her tone again. “And I got this now, I know what I'm doing – well, enough to take over from here. I won't be sobbing into your face anymore.”

"Good. That... that's good, Ames."

“Laynie, are you okay? You're... you're not really freaked that I said your name, are you?”

“No,” I told her, still honestly. That was the least of my worries.

“Well... alright, if you're sure. I don't want things to be weird on Monday. But hey, it's cool if you wanna leave me alone until then. This was kind of atypical.”

“Super atypical,” I agreed. “Listen, I, um... I wanted to take a bath before I head to bed, so...”

“Right, gotcha. Take it easy. Hey...”

I waited. For a while. “What?”

“I...” Then she cleared her throat and said in a quieter voice, “I don't want you think... it wasn't your voice getting me off, okay? Or talking to you. It just... made it easier to have a friend with me. Made me feel safer, like I told you before. That's all it was, so... so don't wig on me. I'm not girl-crushing on you, I promise.”

“Mm. Thanks.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Click.

Now here I am in the bathtub. The corner of the journal is dripping wet because I'm shaking all over and I dropped it into the water. I'm a complete basket case. I'm going nuts. I infiltrated Pandora's Box while listening to my best friend ride her rubber. I'm a slut. Worse – I'm a pervert. I'm a disgusting pervert. I hate this. I hate what I did, I hate Amy for making it happen, I hate my brother for dying and throwing me and my whole family into a downward spiral, I hate my parents for not being ready for it, and... and I don't know. I hate myself most of all, but I'm not above sharing the wealth.

Why couldn't it have been _me_ in the truck? Why couldn't I have been spared all this pain? Why did I have to end up warped and jaded and crazy and worldly-wise _just enough_ to make me get my rocks off because I was listening to Amy?

ANSWER ME, GOD. I'M TALKING TO _YOU_ OUT THERE. TELL ME WHY. WHY ME. NOW. SPEAK TO ME THROUGH ANYTHING. SOME SIGN. WHY?

Shit. Shit shit shit _shit_ shit shit SHIT.

Now the water's cold and I can't even force myself to warm it up. Shit.

_Laynie_


	13. ♦ THIRTEEN ♦

I'm better today. I slept a lot. Mom keeps asking what's wrong with me. She asks if I need more pills. FUCK PILLS. She wants to fix me so I don't make life unpleasant for her. She doesn't love me. What's the deal? Why is it so hard for her to take in and accept that I am just SAD today? That I need to be sad, or I'll be much, much sadder tomorrow when I have to...

Amy. I'll have to see Amy tomorrow. I don't know if I can handle that.

I need a drink. I need some ex, or shrooms. I need to cut. NO I DON'T. Yes I do. NO. No.

Feelings, all anybody ever talks about is feelings. You know what? Feelings are overrated. There’s really nothing I want to feel, and I want to feel nothing. So why can’t I just do that? Now Amy’s forcing me to feel things that I really have no desire to ever encounter, and she won’t let up, and it’s all happening all over again. With Colin I had no choice because he died without asking me. HE NEVER ASKED IF I WANTED HIM TO GO AWAY. He just let Dr Brown crack his skull open a second time and told him not to wake him up if anything went wrong. What if it only went a _little_ wrong, and all he lost was like, the ability to use his right pinky? What about THAT, huh Big Brother? Not good enough for His Highness?!

Now Amy’s turning me into not just a pervert, not just a lesbian, but a perverted lesbian. And I got no say in the matter. Laynie is an extra in her own life story.

I want to run away from home. Sixty bucks in the sock, twenty in my wallet... five in the empty lipstick, coins in my piggy bank, ten in the booksafe. Where can I get? Nowhere on that.

Shit shit shit shitting shit.

This is all Ephram's fault. If he could just have seen me for _me _and liked _me _instead of crushing on _her _without getting it requited then we could be dating, I could be banging him right now. We had some real chemistry, not just first-date jitters and fake shit, it was REAL. Not that I'm mooning over him, but I miss that it was more concrete than this... this insanity.

Maybe it is nobody but Amy's fault since she was the one that danced through his vision and strung him along, then started doing the same thing to me a week ago.

What the hell am I _talking about?!_

Now I'm so hungry I could eat this book. I'll face the family long enough to eat something stupid and then come back. Or maybe I'll stop off and watch TV... as long as nobody talks to me, that's fine. I can handle it.

_Laynie_


	14. ♦ FOURTEEN ♦

AAARGH. She's so dense! Why? Why are blondes naturally denser than normal people? All day long, she's been following me around like a puppy, asking what the matter is, making sure I haven't told anybody (like who?), alternately apologising and thanking me. But she never sees that something's wrong with _me_. Funny, huh? A laugh riot.

All the live long day we went around like this until finally she catches me heading for the bus after school. That's the end of her patience, and she accosts me and jerks me over to her car.

“I'm starting to worry about you,” she hissed. “Why are you taking the bus?”

“Ames... listen, don't do this to me right now, okay? I'm in a bad place.”

“Did I do something wrong?” Wincing, she said, “Wait, don't answer that. I know it's about Saturday night. I'm not an idiot.”

“No? You do a pretty well-rehearsed impression.”

“Ha, ha. Come on, I know it was weird... it really was, but you have no idea-”

“If you're gonna say that I have no idea how much it meant to you, save it, because I think I actually _do _have an idea after hearing you say it a thousand times. Amy, I get it, you're eternally grateful and will build a palace in my honour once you're Queen of America. Now get out of my face.”

“Laynie!”

“It was _weird!_” I almost shouted. Came really close to it, I mean it. “I told you it was too weird, that I wouldn't do it, and you couldn't take 'no' for an answer, you kept pushing and pushing and it was _freaking Looney Tunes._ I have never felt that out-of-body in my life, okay? And no, your little apologies and gratitudes don't make a dent. The only thing that's gonna get me over this one is _time._”

Now she was crying. Of course. Right on cue. It's like somebody crossed some wires in that girl's head and gave her overactive tear ducts that need to be purged at least once daily. “Laynie, come on... I... I didn't...”

“I know. You never do.”

It was underhanded and I knew it, but I wanted her to go through a tenth of what I suffered with over that long, long Sunday. God... maybe _I'm_ the one with the crossed wires.

She drove straight to my house so that she was waiting when I got off the bus. And she comes up to me and says, “Laynie, listen-”

“No listening. Just let me go inside, you know how much homework we have to d-”

“Talk to me!” she urged. “I... I know, you said it was weird, but can't we talk about how weird it was and make it _less_ weird or something?”

“No.”

“Please?”

I sighed. “Go away, Amy. Leave me alone forever.”

To be honest, she had already been crying when the conversation started, but now it was like she shifted the crying into high gear. “Come on, you can't shut me out! I... not completely, I need to talk to you, I can't not talk to you about it!”

“Talk is cheap. And I don't waste my time on cheap shit.”

“Laynie!”

“LAYNIE!” I shouted back at her, startling her so badly she jumped backward into my mom's begonias. “That's all you ever say! You said it a whole lot Saturday night, too! Laynie, Laynie, _Layniiieee! _ That can sometimes have an adverse effect on relationships, you know!”

Still crying, she looked way. “I know I did that. I'm not that dumb that I already forgot how that went. I just... I thought you understood.”

“Well, I don't. I don't understand how you can want your best friend talking to you while you do that to yourself, then invoke her name while you climax... and then try to pass it off as normal! It's not! It's completely fucked, and I am not over it yet!”

“I told you that I'm not...” She cleared her throat and looked around before she whispered, “I'm not _into you. _I mean it, okay? I just, you were the only one with me, so I said your name. It wasn't supposed to mean anyth-”

“WELL IT DID!” I shouted. “It meant that I can't talk to you anymore for the rest of our lives because now every time you say my name, I think about you screwing yourself! That you had _phone sex_ with me!”

At that Amy actually had the temerity to roll her eyes. (temerity: new word of the day!) “Come on, that's not what happened. It was just you holding my hand while I went at it; for it to be phone sex we'd _both _have to be going at it, right?”

I was stunned into silence. I'd been trying so hard not to think about it that when she brought up the possibility, all I could do was blink and feel awkward. It was like _I_ was the one finding out for the first time that I had been a participant instead of a spectator.

“Wait...” Then she squinted at me like I was a contract with fine print that she wasn't sure she ought to sign. “You didn't... not while I was... you didn't do anything, did you?”

I couldn't handle any more. I turned on my heel and stomped into the house, locking the door behind me.

Fifteen minutes I have sat on my bed, listening to her pound on the door and call my name over and over (yeah, even though I _just told her_ how it made me feel nowadays; see how remarkably dense she is?). Then the phone rang; it wasn't Amy. It was our neighbor asking what was going on and why the Abbott girl was so upset. I snapped, “What, haven't you ever seen two girls have a fight before?!” and hung up.

Should I let her in? Is this at all wise to do? Can't very well leave her down there, spewing out noise pollution left and right. Vapid bitch. Be back soon.

_Laynie_


	15. ♦ FIFTEEN ♦

...m.

I can't analyse yet... first I have to chronicle. I let Amy in.

“SHUT UP,” I told her icily. “Get in here. The neighbors are flipping a shit.”

She obeyed and sat on the couch. I closed the door and joined her, but I sat in one of the armchairs. Normally we'd sit next to each other. Not today.

“Layn-”

“STOP IT!” I half-screamed. “Stop saying that! No! Bad Amy, no treats for you! One more time and I'll swat you with a rolled-up Pinecone!”

At that, she nodded, biting her bottom lip and letting her tears fall. I hate to see her like that. EVERY TIME, I HATE IT. For better or worse, she really is my best friend and I don’t want to see her suffer over anything. Thing is, these sobbing fits happen so often that the shock value has worn off a little, but that doesn't mean I'm just “over” her going to pieces. It eviscerates me every damn time.

“Did you?” she asked after thirty seconds of complete silence. Then there were thirty more.

“Yes.”

She looked up, eyes wide and empty. “But why? I was the only one who needed a training session. You already know what you're doing. So... so I don't...”

“It was hot,” I said in a would-be causal voice. Such a failure. “Listening to somebody get that into it. Couldn't stop myself. That's the whole story, got it? So quit blubbering all over the leather.”

“Then we _did _have phone sex.”

“No,” I scoffed. “It wasn't, n-not really.”

Amy shifted and pulled her feet underneath herself. “We did. Oh God, we did, we had phone sex – Laynie, we're totally gay!”

“Will you cut that out, you spaz? Maybe you went off-meds too early after all!”

“Right,” she said, taking a deep breath and pointing her gaze toward the coffee table. “No, that's true, we're not, we... this is just a weird thing that happened. One-time deal. It doesn't have to feed into some huge cosmic truth or anything.”

I drew my own knees up to my chin. “Amy... you have to stop pushing. You have to stop going to extremes, and asking for help for things you can do on your own. It's going to kill me – _and _you, and everyone around you.”

“I know,” she lamented. “Sorry. I just let myself get carried away.”

“And you can't ever call me for moral support when you're banging yourself. OR when you're banging an actual guy. Either one is... a little too friendly for best friends.”

“I know, I know. God do I know, I'm just too moronic to put it into practice when I'm in the moment.”

“Then get smarter.”

“Yeah. I will, I swear.”

I grimaced. “Let's go get some Coke. The caffeine will take the edge off.”

“Yeah.”

We both stood and headed for the kitchen. As we entered the narrow doorway, we bumped into each other and automatically turned and apologized. We got stuck in that location.

Our faces were so close that our noses were almost touching. It was as close as I had been to anyone in forever, not including when I helped Amy out that first time. Both of us made slight motions as if we were going to move further into the kitchen but neither followed through.

The thing… it’s hard to put into words. Amy’s face is so symmetrical that it’s unsettling. I never think about it much, but right now I am because right then I was. About how her perfect mouth was perfect on both sides of the prime meridian of her head. Sculpted eyebrows, neither of which jutted further upward than the other one. Clear, piercing eyes, neither of which was less clear than its counterpart. She was like some mythical goddess, or a Hollywood starlet that refurbished her face with hours of plastic surgery because she _wanted_ to be a goddess… except that with Amy, all of it was just how she was born. None of which I ever cared about until that moment when she was too close, and our battered friendship had spiraled out of control, and my Zoloft-addled brain no longer understood by default that the way she looked wasn’t supposed to have any effect on me.

Another flutter. Just like on the porch.

Then Amy cleared her throat and went past me. “You, uh... Coke, right? Or root beer?”

“Root beer,” I croaked.

“You were going to kiss me,” she said, easy, like it was the easiest thing.

“Y-yeah.”

“Okay.” She set the aluminium cans down on the counter and looked up at me with these glazed-over eyes. “Good. That's good, that's... right, that's fine.”

“No,” I protested suddenly, a day late and a dollar short. “I wasn't going to kiss you, no way! What? How did you come up with that one?”

“It's fine,” she told me soothingly, popping open the can – and cutting herself on the inside of the hole. “OW!”

“Let me see!” I ran around the counter and took her hand in mine, looking at the tiny bead of blood that was welling up. “It’s not so bad, I- God, you klutz! How can you cut yourself on a soda can?”

“Sorry,” she whispered fearfully. “I don't know, maybe I was born without the part of my brain that can do simple tasks like ope...”

Her voice died in the middle of that word because I had stuck her finger in my mouth. It was like a muscle-memory thing; I usually do that with my own cuts before I wash them off and grab a Band-Aid, and I was holding her hand in mine already so I just did it. I let it fall away slightly as we blinked at each other, confused, curious about the other person's thoughts. Then I put it back up to my mouth again.

“Ooh...” she trilled. We both shivered. I felt myself do it and saw her echo me. She jerked her hand back, then stuck the injured digit into her own mouth... and we both looked at each other _again_. An indirect kiss.

“This is so wrong,” I blurted out. “This cannot be happening, Amy. I don't want this.”

“What's happening?” she said blithely, rummaging around in the cabinets until she found bandages. As she put one on her finger, she babbled. “Nothing's happening, nothing at all. Why should anything be happening? Just because you sucked on my finger when I had a cut, that's nothing, that's simple logic; you were wicking the blood away to discourage infection – no, I meant reduce the _chance _of infection. It doesn't have a mind of its own that you can discourage. Anyway, thanks a lot. The blood itself probably won't hurt you, I don't have any diseases; I'm not even sick with a cold right now! It has been going around, but I've already had it and got over it like, a month ago, so I doubt any germs are still in my syst-”

“AMY!”

She spun around so quickly that she knocked the entire box of Band-Aids all over the floor. “WHAT?!”

“Tell me that somehow, this is going to turn out okay. Tell me that... that we can get over it.”

“There's nothing to get over,” she told me sternly. “Because _nothing happened._ You helped me out with the new toys, got a little something out of it for yourself. Big whoop! I'm sure it happens all the time. And so what if you sucked on my finger? My hands were clean. Well, I had been driving, but I'm pretty sure my steering wheel doesn't have anyth-”

“Stop _doing _that,” I urged her through gritted teeth. Shaking like a leaf, I took a step toward her and actually heard her squeak like a mouse. “I... I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but I'm scared of how this is going to end up, so you gotta give me something to hold onto!”

“You want something to hold onto?” she said, still in that stern, barely-not-cracking-up tone. “How about the fact that you're my best friend? I care about you more than anybody in the world, Laynie – well, except maybe my parents, but that's only because of the family thing. You... you're my world.”

Both of our jaws dropped.

“WAIT!” she pipped. “Not like that! Not like w-we're going out and you're my world that I can wrap myself up and swim inside! No way! It's j-just- no, listen to me, don't go making all those assumptions in your head, I can see you making them right now!”

“You're my world, too.”

This time, only her jaw dropped. “L-Laynie? What do _you _mean?”

“I mean what you meant. Wh... or what you say you meant. That you and I? We're all we have.” I clamped my eyes shut. “That doesn't- that _does not _mean we have to be gay. Just that we're important to each other in a way nobody else will really get. That's what true friendship is, right? It's indefinable.”

Relieved, she stepped toward me with her papercut hand clenched over her heart and whispered, “Yes! Yes, that's totally what I meant! We're inseparable! We're bosom buddies! I mean, nobody I know really gets me the way you do, which just means that... that we need each other in our lives. And I for one think that's a pretty rare thing, I mean, you don't walk down the street and run into fifteen people you can share every ugly detail of your life with, do you?”

“I mean, yeah,” I laughed. “Just because I wake up every morning and you're the first person I think of... what is that? It's because we're so close that we're practically symbiotic!”

“Exactly!”

We smiled at each other for a few moments before the smiles slid away, leaving us staring, pondering, dreading... oh, the dreading. DREADING. For almost one full minute we stood like that, out of our depth, floundering and reeling, reflecting back on the history of our relationship.

Then she whispered. “Dammit. We _are, _aren't we?”

“No.” I shook my head violently, turning away from her. “I'm not.”

“But we are. A little, in some ways. I think.”

“No.”

I only tensed when Amy's hands slid around my shoulders, when she pressed her face into the back of my neck. Tensing because I liked that, how her eyelashes tickled the tiny hairs on my nape. I held very still for a while, and so did she once she'd settled against me. Then she spoke in a whisper.

“It's okay, I think. For us to like each other. We're friends.”

“Not that kind of friends. Not ones with benefits.”

“You were so sweet when you did that for me,” she told me hesitantly. I wanted to turn around and scream at her for bringing it up again, but she sounded so ashamed that I figured it would be redundant. “I... I know, it's crazy to say, but I felt love in that. Coming from you. I knew you cared about me.”

“I always will. But you're asking me to... to change that into a type of love that I can't give you.”

“How much of a change is it, really?” She gave a nervous laugh. “I m-mean, we already love each other. I... I m-mean, that's a lot to take in right now, I-”

I jerked away from her and reached back with my hand. She flinched; I saw her flinch. We both knew I was going to slap her. I wanted to shut her up, to make her stop pushing. _Pushing, pushing, ALWAYS.._. but instead, my hand brushed that strand of hair that always comes untucked from behind her ear.

Then I sank to the kitchen floor, trembling. “No, no, this is bad,” I whispered.

“It's not!” Amy told me, just as freaked as I was. She knelt next to me, looking left and right for help and finding none, then curled her arms around me. “It's just-” I shoved her arms away, but she put them around me again and I couldn't figure out how to make myself do it a second time. “It's just love.”

“What the fuck are you supposed to be, Richard Simmons?!” I bit out angrily. “That's all this is – love, huh? You and I are supposed to have each other's back, be _amigas_, be there for each other! I'm supposed to be there for you when you whine about boys, not _be _the one you whine about!”

“Laynie, stop that right now!” she blubbered. “I n-never wanted to be a l-lesbian or anything, and it's still a thing I can't quite get, b-but... but I can deal if that's how this goes! I can!”

“Like I give a shit about dating girls! I just don't want the girl I date to be _you!”_

That honestly surprised her, and it was the kind of curious surprise like when you're already being held up at gunpoint by a psychopath and you suddenly notice he has Hello Kitty tattooed on his bicep. “What? I mean... why not me? Does my breath smell?”

“YOU DON'T LISTEN!” I snapped. “Mostly that! God, didn't you hear me? You're my BUDDY, not my BEDDY-BUDDY! Just because I like cock doesn't mean that's at the _top_ of the list of things I’ll regret losing if we can't pull ourselves out of this! There's more important stuff, you idiot!”

For a while we just laid there on the cold tile, crying off and on, and I thought really hard about how helpless I felt. Like being sucked down a whirlpool. I kept trying to tell myself I wasn't gay, or that I didn't like Amy like that, and somehow it was getting worse instead of better. Wasn't I master of my own destiny? Nope. Destiny had me by the gonads.

Finally, in a meek, defeated voice, Amy whispered to me, “I love you.”

“Dammit.”

“That's priority one, okay? Stop hating me for it. Just... I love you, and I want you to remember it. Please, please, _please..._”

Tears streaming down my stupid face, I whispered, “Sorry. I know that. You know I love you, too. But what the hell is it all supposed to mean?”

“I don't know, either. You're asking me? I can't even figure out which end of the dildo to use.”

We laughed a little, then we got quiet again. Then we went back to the living room and curled up with each other on the couch. Since for whatever reason Amy was feeling braver than I was, she spooned me, and I let myself die in the warmth of her arms. I wanted to stab myself in the face over how insane this was all making me, but it was beautiful anyway.

“Listen,” I said quietly. “I... can you promise to listen and not talk for a while so I can get this out?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. So... so here it is. I don't want to date you or anything. I don't want us to become some huge gaudy lesbian thing. I don't even want to have these feelings and dirty thoughts about you, but I can't seem to make them go away so, uh, I guess we have to deal with them.”

“Mm.” That was all she said. I know she wanted to babble again but out of respect she somehow buttoned it.

“We need to get this stuff straight, don't we? That...” I clutched at her hands for support and she let me. “I don't look at you and think you're sexy. I never once have thought about kissing you, or having kinky sex with all kinds of steel gadgets, or anything. We're friends.”

“But...” she prompted gently.

“But after I helped you break your seal, everything began to change a little bit at a time. I started thinking about you differently – just a little differently, not a complete flip away from the norm. What’s wrong with my cerebral cortex? Why did listening to you... I mean, I should have had control, I should have been able to keep my hands to myself, so why? Tell me what's wrong with me...”

I could hear the distraught tears in her voice when she said to me, “I don't know.”

“Is it all me, though? Am I dragging you down here?” It took a lot of determination for me to get the next part out, but I did it. “I... deep down, I did know that your wanting to buy your own toy and all that, and get your virginity over with, it was pretty normal. So what if the real reason I started flipping out was because-”

“Don't,” she pleaded. “It's not just you; I was being weird about it, too, okay? I c-can't let you own all that when part of it _was _me.” A second of building up her own resolve. “Because having you there the first time? It got me off more. Just because... I dunno, I guess knowing you knew what it was like, and... and you opened me up so easy, and it felt so, so_ right_. I tried to keep rationalizing that it was your skill, but it probably really was you, and that I'm so close to you. It made it sweeter, it made it real.”

“You can't be saying this stuff to me,” I half-laughed. “You're trying to... I'm not ready to hear this.”

“I'm not ready to say it!” she blubbered into my shoulder, squeezing me to her more tightly. It felt too good. It was sinfully good. “But... I don't wanna hurt you by keeping all this in and letting you think it's all you; that's even worse. I’d hate myself forever if I actually let that happen.”

“You love me.” It was a statement full of awe. _“Wow.”_

“I do, Laynie. Just... well, if you laugh I'll clobber you, but I'm not ready for, um, for kisses or anything yet.”

“We don't have to do that at all,” I said seriously. “I mean, who says that has to be how we are? Lovey-dovey. We can just be really close friends who get each other off once in a while if we want. I don't remember signing any contract forcing us to be a 'couple', do you?”

She hesitated a moment, then whispered, “On the one hand, no. But... this...”

Then I felt her warm, tear-moistened cheek on mine, and I came pretty damn close to a nervous breakdown. It was everything I didn't want to happen suddenly erupting like St. Elmo's fire (the natural phenomenon, not the Brat Pack movie). Her face on mine, it was so tender and beautiful, and I wanted to bite it. I wanted to claw at her to make it stop, even while I wanted her to keep going... maybe even do _more_.

How fucked up am I, seriously? How damaged can you get in seventeen short years on the planet Earth that you even consider ruining the only half-decent part of an ultra-shitty life because... because what, you're horny? WHYYY? Somebody needs to tell me this stuff! I can't figure it out all by myself, and this journal isn't helping, and I don't know what to DO.

Anyway... we stayed like that for a really long time. I'm not sure how long. Then all of a sudden Amy giggled. When I turned around to ask her why, she just whispered, "What happened to those sodas we were supposed to have?"

It made us both laugh like we were being tickled by a million chicken feathers. Magically, it took all that gravity and fear and smooshed them under the couch cushions where they wouldn't bother us for a while. That was a break we needed.

Pretty soon after that Amy went home. I'm not saying everything was like, "all good", but it gave us momentary peace which we SO needed. I'm grateful for that, at least, but it's still crazy. I'm still crazy, going crazy, slowly going crazy, one two three four five six _switch_. Prime example right there; somehow I actually thought that was a sane thing to write.

Outside interference is necessary. But I don't trust anybody in this town any further than I can throw them, and I have the muscle tone of a Twizzler. I don't know, I don't know, I don't freaking KNOW what to DO.

_Laynie_


	16. ♦ SIXTEEN ♦

Good evening, Useless Diary. It has been a day or two since I last wrote, and here's what you missed.

Amy and I are being all fake-nice right now. Around other people. It's like _Stepford Wives_ without pearls. When we're alone, we don't really get into it or try to grow and learn, we just... hold each other for a while if we can get away with it. Or maybe hands. And I could be speaking out of turn by saying this, but I'm pretty damn sure she's terrified the entire time we're “enjoying” it... like I am. Maybe I'm wrong. I feel wrong all the time anyway, so it wouldn’t be a jolt.

No kissing, no touching, no nibbling ear lobes or _toys_ or anything stupid. Hugging each other the way we do now is gross enough. If I could rewind and undo this, put us back in the Friend-Zone of yesteryear (yesterweek?), you can bet your sweet ass I'd have already done it. Screw this annoying “sexual tension” bullshit, it's pathetic and aggravating.

UAAAUGH.

Moving on... another thing happened before dinner. I wanted to write about it as soon as I got home but I got home just in time for dinner, so Mom forced me into the dining room so I could have the pleasure of watching my dad space out and my mom act all neurotic about quiche. _Quiche._ Now that such tortures are over...

First of all, I'd like to apologize for how this starts, but it's what happened, I swear. No, I don't know _why _it did, but it just did. Like when somebody taps you on the shoulder, and you're not expecting it, and you spin around and elbow them in the solar plexus? Pretty much the same.

I was coming out of Mama Joy's cause I wasn't feeling it, and I was even thinking about heading over to Gino Chang's for some pot stickers or a slice of bacon-and-peppers. As I rounded the corner, another person was doing the same thing in the opposite direction. We automatically spent a couple of seconds doing that “you go left and I'll go right – oh crap, you went right too, so now I'll go left” dance before we both realized we knew each other.

“Oh! Ephram.”

“Hey,” he said with that slight half-smile of his. I'll admit, I was staring at the way a few snowflakes had stuck in his hair and how the chill wind made his nose a little bit red; how cute it made him look. The boy was still cute, he was always gonna be, girl-kissing tendencies or no girl-kissing tendencies. That's part of the reason I was so distracted that I fumbled the ball when he asked... “How've you been lately?”

“Gay. How about you?”

_Crap._

When his eyebrows came together in that thoughtful-slash-tortured-artist look of his, I knew I was dead. I'd just Kurt Cobained myself in the face; nobody could clean this up, not even Courtney Love and a gallon of bleach. What do they call that? A Freudian Slip? Yeah… GOD did I slip.

“Uhh... gay, how? As in bubbly and carefree?”

“Um... no, I...” Needless to say, my reaction failed to smooth things over.

“So who's the lucky lady?” he joked, obviously secure in the knowledge that I hadn't _really_ meant I was a lesbian. Poor dumb guy.

“N-nobody,” I mumbled, staring at my shoes. “I... I gotta go.”

“Hey,” he said in an urgent tone, catching my forearm as I made to speed past. “Hang on a second. You're really upset, huh? What's up?”

“Don't worry about it, okay? Sorry.”

“Laynie... seriously, what's wrong? You look like you're gonna blow chunks.”

“Leave me alone, okay?” I snapped, trying not to meet his eyes while meeting his eyes. You know what I mean there, right? “I'm... I'm just not in a good place, and you're not gonna be able to fix everything with a magical potion from Pianoland, so just... just leave me alone.”

Then he leaned in, expression flipping from confused to alarmed. “Wait up, hold the phone. You're not actually... uhhh, not, uh, that it would be a bad thing or whatever, I just... wow, really?”

“Dammit, Ephram, go to Hell!” I succeeded in pulling away from him, ran full tilt for a few steps, then practically fell against the nearby building. “Damn...”

I wasn't surprised he didn't run after me once I stopped moving. He kind of strolled up behind me, didn't touch me again, didn't move more than necessary. Then he whispered, “You wanna talk about it?”

“No…”

“Okay. You need me to get you some water or something?”

Something about the way he offered to help me without prying for details made me lose it. I flung myself onto his chest and sobbed like a toddler with a skinned knee. Except what I was feeling wasn’t like a skinned knee; it was like being skinned on every surface of my body. Yeah… flayed alive. That’s how this grand thing we call love really feels, people: _flayed._ Flayed and filleted and flambéed.

I’ll spare you the ten minutes or so that I spent blubbering and howling incoherently and cut to the two of us on the Mama Joy’s back steps – you know, by the loading dock where the supply trucks dump their giant boxes of cheese and stuff. He had an arm around me, and I could tell he felt nervous and uncomfortable but not as bad as, for instance, Bright would have been. Or anybody else probably.

“You can’t tell anybody,” was the first thing I got out that contained actual thoughts. Somehow, the way the frozen shards of precipitation hung in the air around us made me feel like we really were in some safehouse where nobody could overhear my humiliating secret. “Please, swear it, swear you won’t go around telling the whole town that I… that I’ve been-“

“Hey, don’t worry,” he told me quickly. “I mean, it’s Everwood; these broad-minded folk would probably paint a big red ‘L’ on you or something annoying. Nobody wants that.” When I didn’t volunteer anything else, he said, “So… wow.”

“Yeah, wow.”

“Is this is a recent thing?” Then he kind of squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t even know if that made sense. Just, I was thinking about how I saw you guys holding hands a while back, and… anyway, it’s not like you just signed up and got a ceremonial neckerchief.”

“No, it… yeah, it is. New, I mean. Or maybe it’s not and I’ve been… well, h-had a… I don’t know. But no, there haven’t been any girls before, I guess.” I yanked at my hair. “ARGH, this sucks! I don’t even know how to talk _about _it, much less what to _do._ It’s like fucking Opposite Day, where I have to keep remembering I can’t just say ‘So he and I’ and have to say ‘_she _and I’ instead, and can’t say ‘You know what I mean?’ because _I _don’t even know what I mean!” Then I chanced a smile. “Know what I mean?”

All he did was grin and look down at his snow-covered shoes.

“Ephram, I don’t want this but it’s pretty insistent. That’s what it feels like; that what I _want _is to be a straight girl like I always thought I was, but I’m fighting a losing battle. Because I’m on the wrong side, you know? I’m losing because I’m _supposed _to b-be… to be gay, even though it’s not what I’d choose.”

He nodded, breath fogging on the air as he thought carefully about his next words. “We don’t always get a choice. Sometimes it’s like, life just throws crap at you and says ‘Deal with it.’ And either you do and you move on, or you don’t and you make yourself miserable. Which is totally messed up, but there’s no customer service phone number for life, y’know?”

I almost laughed. A little of his mom's untimely death was creeping into that sentiment, which helped to make an end run around my whining about silly things like sexuality. It felt good to not be crying, anyway. Sniffling, I rubbed at my face and said, “Just so you’re the first to know… I mean, I probably shouldn’t divulge this to anyone at all yet, but it’s, uh, it’s Amy.”

“Amy what?” Then he got it and his eyes flew open. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling the tears come again and cutting them off. Enough is enough. “Like I saw it coming, either. Just… man, I probably could tell you how it all got started but it would be TMI, and wouldn’t really explain how I ended up in this situation anyway, so never mind.”

His voice was a little higher and thinner than usual when he squeaked out, “Right.”

I frowned at him, trying to show him through my face that I meant what I was saying. “I’m really sorry, Ephram. Somehow I suddenly feel like this is something I did _to _you, because I know we had a few dates that ended in disaster, and that you’ve always had a thing for Amy, and now here I go and cut you off from both of us because I can’t just _stay_ best-friends with my best friend! I…” Then I coughed, shivering and wrapping my arms around my stomach. “Of course, maybe I’m going postal over nothing. You’ve got the babysitter chick now. You probably forgot we even dated.”

At that, his still-astounded face turned bitter as he smiled. “Ah. Well, I’m not so sure. Madison and me, we spend so much time fighting and breaking up and being weird that I’m not sure at this point that we even still count as a couple.”

“Sorry,” I told him earnestly. “That bites.”

“Yeah.” Then he sighed, sending out another little puff of fog. “But you got bigger problems than that. Fresher ones, at least.”

I wrapped my arms even tighter around me, suddenly cold down to my bones. “Maybe. I dunno, it’s not even like anything’s _wrong _– well, something’s _always _wrong, but we’re not fighting, or avoiding each other. It’s just… every time we’re together it’s so surreal that I feel like I lost her as a best friend, and that the… the _thing _I got in return is so scary that I can’t even enjoy it. Like trading in your car for a helicopter when you have no idea how to fly one; it could be really cool if you knew, but if you don’t? You’ll spend every single second in the air knowing, _knowing _that you are about to crash and die.”

“Wow. Drama.” Then I laughed and punched him, and he grinned back. “Obviously you’re not completely dead yet if you can still bruise my shoulder.”

“Jerk.” But I stayed smiling after that. Somehow just pointing out that I was making mountains out of molehills took the edge off, which was totally the right thing. How does he do that, anyway? “Better watch out or I’ll bruise more than that.”

“Yeah? So when are you signing up for roller derby?” When my jaw dropped he grimaced and said, “Too soon for dyke jokes, maybe?”

“Maybe yes,” I told him, even though I was laughing. “And for your information, Brown, there are plenty of straight girls in roller derby – or so I hear on the grapevine.”

“Yeah, I'll take your word for it. All joking aside, though, I didn’t forget we dated. You make a pretty lasting impression, Laynie Hart.”

“Oh yeah? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Instead of answering, he just stood up and started walking away. I could see the big smile bunching up his cheek from his profile, though. I almost let him go, then ran after him, only slipping and sliding a little in the snow, and hugged him from behind.

“Thanks. For listening, and for not being a dick.”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and said, “Can I get that on paper? Somebody needs to tell Madison I’m not a dick.”

“It’s cool. She can call me for a referral.” Then I spun him around and tried to kiss him.

“No, sorry,” he told me with his middle and index fingers between our lips. His hands smelled like the inside of woolen pockets, and cold... and coffee, I think. Is it weird that I even noticed how his hands smelled? “I, uh… I’m tempted to let you do it anyway, but I really don’t think I can be your final test of lesbian-ness. Too much mayhem would follow.”

I sighed. “I wasn’t trying to do that, you know, I just… I dunno, gratitude or whatever.”

Nodding, he backed up a step. “Cash and Amazon gift cards are probably safer.” Then he was waving over his shoulder as he moved along through Everwood’s white-dusted streets, hands worming into his coat pockets and swaggering like a true New Yorker.

Why couldn’t I have ended up with him? I mean, God, he’s obviously much cooler than Amy ever was, even if these lobotomized small-town yokels can’t see that. Just my bad luck that I couldn’t hold his attention. Oh well. _C’est la vie_ or some shit.

_Laynie_


	17. ♦ SEVENTEEN ♦

No preamble today. We went to the movies and I guess we made out. NO, no no no no, it’s so much weirder than that, because I wrote it down like… damn, I should probably be writing this whole thing in pencil, shouldn’t I? Way too late to switch; and hey, with pen I can’t erase. Keeps me honest, I suppose.

Anyway, I hope you know that by “we” I didn’t mean me and Ephram Brown. I haven’t really talked to him since then, and that was… two days ago? Three? Something. No, I legit meant Amy (of course).

There’s nothing really special about the movie or the day, or anything else. We were going to go see it anyway, some adaptation of a book that stars a cast of nobodies that the whole world is all keyed up about _finally _coming out… eh, I didn’t pay much attention. We got there, we went in, I got snacks, she got the tickets. It was pretty deserted since the movie had been out for a few weeks, and we sat all the way in the back so the group of middle-aged people in the front rows couldn’t see us, or even hear us if we whispered.

“You know I hate Sno-Caps,” she hissed.

“I know. If I got anything else you’d have snorted it down before I even had one.”

She grunted, taking the tub of popcorn from me. “Fine, whatever, greedy-pants.”

We didn’t talk much for the next thirty minutes, just ate and watched. Then, when most of the food was gone, she reached over and took my hand. Totally natural, like we were super-chill. What the hell? I tensed, and she flashed me a shy smile, so I made my hand relax. Eventually the rest of me took the hint. It was nice.

I put my feet up on the back of the seat in front of us and leaned back a little. Amy did the same thing, and after a few minutes I slid over and lay my head on her shoulder. She laid her head on my head. It was cute to the point of being disgusting, like My Little Pony. A few minutes later, I turned slightly so my forehead was touching her collarbone, and the feeling of skin there made me blush; just a little, not like I was about to have a heart attack. All was not quite “normal” but still fine for the following half hour or so.

Then, completely out of nowhere, I felt a tiny kiss on my scalp.

“What was that for?” I whispered.

“Nothing,” she told me warmly. “Just 'cos.”

I sat up a little bit to look into her eyes, which I could barely see due to the low lights reflected off the flickering silver screen. She bit her lip a little…

The next thing I knew, we were breaking apart and gaping at each other, wide-eyed and breathless. My feet were now suddenly tucked into the seat beside me so I could lean over toward Amy more easily. We couldn’t have been kissing for more than a few seconds, but I could barely remember those seconds, and that was almost scarier than the act itself.

“Shit,” I breathed.

“No, it’s okay, I think,” she babbled, clearly trying to come to grips. “I m-mean… wow, that was different, _really_ different, but… I th-think we were k-kind of building up to that, right?”

Her lips were salty. Haha, popcorn, right? Geez, that stuff really seems to have it in for me! But at the time I was so freaked that I was wondering what it _meant_ that her lips were salty, as if there were some hidden truth beneath the surface. Then I just looked at her for a moment, out of breath and on the brink of insanity.

“Laynie, don’t be mad…”

“I’m not,” I said, forcing a slight smile. I wanted to force a huge happy grin that would make both of us feel better, but I couldn’t lie. “I… well, I’m wigging, but I’m not mad. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But I kissed your head,” she whispered. “That’s my fault. I got the ball rolling.”

“I could have told you to cut it out and went back to my seat. Nobody’s the bad guy, it just… it happened, that’s all. So don’t stress.”

Amy pointed her head toward the moving pictures, still watching me out of the corner of her eye. “Could it… maybe… happen again?”

“What?”

“Sorry!” she squeaked, tucking a golden thread of hair behind her ear. “Sorry, that was totally evil, I didn’t mean it. Forget it.”

We both held very still while somebody on the screen exploded or whatever. Then I whispered, “If you’re sure you’re up for it…”

This time, we both were licking our lips and trembling from head to toe as we leaned in. The first split-second was awful, like a bad commercial for something, or like having to eat a lemon. Then suddenly… we liked it. We were aware of what was happening and we liked it anyway. Or because? I don’t know about that part for sure, I just know that for the very first time, I actually began to think of our shift in relationship status as a positive thing instead of a negative one.

I’ve kissed a few boys. Not a hundred of them, but one here, one there. Some were good, some, uh, needed a crash course before I could tolerate. With Amy it was a whole new experience; not because she was a girl necessarily, but at the same time it was. As girls, we're kind of trained from birth that the guy takes control, and the girl kind of molds herself to his whims. Kissing too: he goes in for the kill, we lie back and respond, he's the first one to initiate tongues, to take our tops off, blah blah blah. We can be the ones to start it, but if we do we're "slutty" or "fast", so in the long run it's smarter for us to be submissive... at least, in the bedroom. I refuse to be submissive in any other area of life. Period.

There was our problem - well, not really a problem, just kind of a surprise. We were BOTH trying to be the submissive ones, both expecting the other person to move first... and when they didn't, we both hesitantly made moves at the same time, testing to see if it would be okay. I mean, _more_ hesitantly, because of our roles in this – we were already skittish due to the whole sapphic slant to begin with! Everything was so much _more_ exciting when you had even _less_ of an idea what to expect! I was the first one to put my hand on her cheek, but she used her tongue before I did. So on and so forth, ever and on, Amen.

DAMN was it good. Ridiculous and nuts, but good, so good that I wanted to keep going, but then I caught the couple on the screen kissing and a swell of music and I broke away.

"What is it?" Amy panted urgently, eyes still glassy because she was in Makeout Mode.

"The movie's almost over."

"So who cares? Not like we were paying attention, anyway."

We both grinned at the innuendo in that statement, but I said, "Cool your jets, Casanova Abbott. The movie ending means those people down there are about to turn around."

"Right," she said, embarrassed that she hadn't thought of such a thing. "Well... yeah, I guess that could lead to awkwardness and pathetic excuses."

We spent a few frenzied seconds wiping away the vestiges of spit and sweat and composing ourselves, and then sure enough, the group of people several rows down began to stand as the credits rolled. I vaguely recognized one of them as the mother of one of Amy's friends, but I couldn't remember which one – and another one of them was Dr Andrew Brown, who waved animatedly at us and grinned that SuperBeard grin. I wanted to curl up and croak, but I waved and smiled back, and so did Amy... even though she wasn't exactly friendly with him since he botched mending her would-be soulmate’s brain. I mean, Colin was my brother, too, but I didn't blame him the way she did. Colin had given the doc a solid "Do Not Resuscitate" and I respect that (or I do now after much soul-searching). Amy never did.

"Isn't he supposed to be running a clinic right now?" Amy grumbled.

I shrugged. "Want the rest of my Sno-Caps?" The glare she gave me back was priceless.

Outside, we were about halfway back to the car when she said, "So... that happened."

"Don't make such a big deal," I sighed. "I mean, he did what he could; it was a risky procedure to begin with."

"He who?"

"Dr Brown." Then I stopped. "Wait, what were _you_ talking about?"

"Us." Her cheeks weren't just rosy from the nip in the air. "Uhh... what we were doing _before_ the movie ended. Believe it or don't, Everwood does not revolve around that one neurosurgeon."

Watching my shoes very intently as I walked, I brought us back to the topic. "It happened. What about it?"

"Shouldn't we... I dunno, talk about this, or at least pretend it was important?"

"Nah. No big deal."

Amy was aghast. "No big deal?! I just-"

_"SHHH!"_

"I just made out with my best friend," she hissed; it was still kind of a stage whisper, though. "This is a boring afternoon to you?"

"Ames, it's not like it's the most ambitious thing we've ever done together, remember?"

"That was... that was just a one-time fluke," she snapped. "This was intentional and... and beautiful, it was really beautiful even though it was kind of WRONG!"

"You really thought it was beautiful?"

We stood for a moment next to her SUV, breath fogging in the air, and she grinned a silly grin that was more than a little contagious. Then, to break the tension, I fluttered my eyelashes as I walked around the car and asked over its roof, "Do you think... _I'M_ beautiful?"

"Ravishing, dear, ravishing," she said in a decent impersonation of Brenda Baxworth. "That look is simply splendid on you."

"Splendid!" I said, mostly mocking the way her father always says it, and she rolled her eyes.

She drove me home and we kissed in her car. It was much quicker – the hills have eyes, and so do the big-mouthed neighbor ladies – but still set us to tingling and giggling. _Giggling _now. Shoot me.

Therefore, I have been rolling around on my bed for the past half hour, trying to decide if I’m exhilarated, creeped out, happy, or terrified. And my answer has to be “yes”. Yes I am.

(There’s a Melissa Ethridge reference in there for the smart ones.)

Goodnight, Journal. Here’s hoping you find a pretty young diary you’re compatible with, too, and you can get married and have lots of little baby journals – maybe they’ll be Post-It pads. I’ll read that tomorrow and think it sounds stupid, but right now who cares? I’m flying.

_Laynie_


	18. ♦ EIGHTEEN ♦

You wanna know the definition of buzzkill? Hang on, I’ll give it to you in longform.

Let’s cut through the crap to the heart of the matter; yadda yadda, it’s been like a week, blah blah blah, floating around in bliss, et cetera. Today, we’re at Amy’s house watching some TV on her couch. Mom’s off saving the free world and Dad’s off being cantankerous or whatever it is that makes him feel like he’s doing his job. We’re alone in the cozy house. I’ll give you three guesses what kind of content the next page or two will contain, or you just don't get the privilege of reading it.

My hands were halfway up her t-shirt when she whispered, “Wait, hang on.”

“Don't wanna,” I told her playfully.

“Well, I _do _wanna.” She tucked some hair behind her ear and said, “I... I know we've been doing a lot of, um, stuff lately, but I'm not sure about anything other than... the stuff that has already been done.”

“Me either. But part of me is done waiting.”

“Hah!” she moaned when I bit her earlobe. Yeah, let's just go ahead and say we've progressed. Let's also say I love it when she moans. “B-but Laynie, come on, I- come on, cut it out!”

“Amy, I'm loving this so much,” I urged her, hands cupping the back of her head. “Do you know what it's taken for me to get here, to get around... y'know, the fact that we're supposed to be chums, and that you don't have that one item I usually require for this part, and the-”

“Okay, okay,” she sighed impatiently. “Just... st-stop digging your nails into my stomach for a second.”

“No, Amy.” I kissed her again, sweeter, without fondling or groping or advances. She melted like butter under my hands, and I whispered, “I want that, but more. These little preview sessions are only amping me up for the whole enchilada.”

Frowning, Amy reached up and pulled me down onto her. “They don't feel like previews to me. They feel like the main attraction.”

“Believe me, there's definitely attraction going on.”

A light, musical laugh. “C'mere, you.”

Then we were going at it again. I had to admit, even though parts of my anatomy were pretty much screaming “What are you waiting for?!” at me, it's not like we were bored. No boredom there.

This time, she was the one trying to unhook _my_ bra and I was giggling into the kiss when we heard the front door open.

“SHIT.” It wasn't even a whisper, it was just a breath formed into a word, but Amy had captured the mood of the moment very clearly. Both of us scrambled to sit up, to disentangle each other, to... pull our shirts back on. Didn't I mention we had progressed somewhat? Sadly, we had almost succeed in all of this, but we were just a few seconds too late.

“Amy, which sounds like a more lame chick flick,” Bright asked as he walked in, eyes pointed down at the two DVDs in his hands, “_Never Been Kissed _or _Say Anything_? I figure the second one's gotta be worse 'cos it's like, an Eighties chick flick, which are even sappier than the modern ones – and besides, Drew Barrymore’s like, smokin’ hot, so I… uh, hey.”

“Hey,” I say back to him, his small eyes blinking at mine. The most ironically-named boy in the universe, “Bright” really isn’t all that quick on the uptake, but I could still see calculations whizzing through his brain as I watched him look between us.

“What’s with the dramedy film festival?” Amy asked, hoping to distract. Usually not that difficult.

“W-ell,” he said slowly, still looking between us and the way we were trying to casually tuck shirts in, smooth down hair, wipe away extra lipstick. “I got this impending date with Stacy Peaches – oh my God, her last name is _PEACHES_, do you get how _incredible _that is? Anyway… that’s suddenly way less important to me, because I’m trying to figure out what the hell was going on before I walked in.”

“Going on?” Amy attempted, turning to look at me as if to silently ask if I knew what he meant. I played my part, shrugged, and she turned back. “Uh, not much. TV.”

Bright dove on the remote control, switched off the TV, then said, “Okay, fine. You guys were just watching TV, that’s all, huh? So tell me… _what_ was on right before I did that?”

We both stalled, racking our brains. _Neither of us had even the vaguest idea. _I started to blurt out that it was a police drama, or a cartoon, or _anything_, but when I realized that the only reason I could be sure that the TV was on in the first place was because he had just turned it off I decided we were goners and didn’t waste my breath.

“_EHHT,”_ he grated, making that game show buzzer noise that everybody hates. “Time’s up! It was _Cribs_.”

“So?” I said. “Just wasn’t that entertaining, that’s all.”

“Holy shit, you guys were making out!”

“No, we weren’t!” Amy protested immediately. “Gross-out, Bright, your mind works in sick ways!”

“Yeah, you were!” he needled, patented mischievous grin spreading across his face and conjuring up those dimples that only show when he’s filled with wicked glee. “Come on, do you have any idea how many times I've been gettin’ all hot and heavy in some chick's house when her parents come home from the dinner party an hour early? Pretty much got all the reactions memorised. You two were totally rocking some serious bi-curious mojo! This is worth its weight in gold!”

“Bright!” Amy snapped. “Don’t be such a- a-“

“A what? An intelligent dude who’s not dumb enough to fall for your line of crap? Grow up, Amy, I got you in my crosshairs and there’s no point running!”

“_Ooh, _why are you so _infuriating?!”_

“Tell it to the judge! Oh man, this is gonna be awesome when Mom and Dad find out, they’ll hit the ceiling!”

“Harold Brighton, I swear to GOD-“

I felt my stomach growing cold, and my ears suddenly began ringing. Both of them were shouting at each other, but I could no longer hear it. Which part of this was worse, that Bright was rubbing it in… or that Amy was going to such great lengths to deny? I knew she wasn’t really ashamed of what we were doing (or not anymore than me, at least), but it was still a weird thing to tell anybody; that was a point we could both agree on. It was also possible she just didn’t want to give Bright the satisfaction of knowing he was right and that he had “busted” us. God, who would with the way he was acting? Still…

“I really should break down get myself one of those camera-phones,” Bright was musing as Amy stood nose-to-nose with him – or nose-to-chest, since he pretty much dwarfed us petite girls. “Woulda been great to have photographic evidence to back up the sweetest story _ever_. I wonder if I can still upgrade?”

“BRIGHT.”

This last part came from me, and when he swung his gaze in my direction I stood with my arms folded, glowering. “Yeah?”

“I really wanna congratulate you for being such a stand-up guy,” I seethed, walking straight over to him. “Obviously my life’s so perfect right now that I need you holding this over our heads. But yeah, whatever, I guess this is pretty funny.” I leaned up to say directly into his startled face, “HA.”

“Uh, what?”

“Amy, I’m going home. Goodnight.”

Amy didn’t reply. She looked like she was fighting between the urges to yell at Bright again and to tell me I didn’t have to go, and she couldn’t pick, so she just stayed quiet and looked a little bit lost. That made me regret leaving a little… but not enough to stop me.

I had almost slammed the door behind me when I turned around and growled, “You know what, Bright? Maybe once in a while, when you’re trying to torture your sister like any responsible big brother would, you could try to imagine how what you’re doing affects other people.” _Then _I left.

He’s such a jerk. I know it’s his way, and it’s not like he was genuinely trying to hurt us – he just thought screwing with us was funny, we’d get all annoyed, he’d have a good laugh, and that would be it. Not once did it enter into his thick skull that in a small, conservative town like this, we might really be looked at differently if anybody found out. Or that we were probably already freaked out about what we were doing and that him making a big deal out of it wasn’t just annoying and funny, it was cruel. He’s not that deep. Which means sometimes you have to do what I did: shake him up. Give an object lesson. Jump down his throat.

See now? What I said about us not being close… there are reasons. God knows I’ve never had mental oceans, but I’m not a wading pool. Bright is nice to have around for parties and stuff, but it’s pointless to come to him with anything else.

Anyway, that was the buzzkill part. I’m not done yet.

Afterward, I stumble into Mama Joy’s because I’m not sure what else to do; I don’t feel like getting carded at some bar and having to flash my fake ID, I sure as hell don’t wanna go home, and where else is there? Nobody in this town likes me anymore. I got too “moody” and “weird” after Colin went into the coma and I began distancing myself.

Why do people suck at making an effort? People everywhere, not just Everwood… but for some reason it’s worse here. In a small town, people are always there for you as long as the thing you need from them is something “normal”. If it’s “I lost my job” or “I’ve been robbed” or “I’m slowly going blind”, everybody pitches in; they’re so happy to help you. On the other hand… if it’s “I’m on anti-depressants”, or “I have AIDS”, or “I’m gay”, _you are shit out of luck._ “Muddle through it on your own, because all that stuff is your fault for being different”, they seem to say reflexively. So much worse than if they just didn’t care at all, because then there’s a pecking order to their ability to dole out compassion. Bunch of ignorant pricks.

IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY.

Into Mama Joy’s I go, I squeeze myself into a booth in the very back and wait, storm clouds rumbling through the inside of my head. I’ve been there maybe three minutes when Nina Feeney comes over with her pencil and pad and says, “Hey, Laynie, what can I get you?”

“Just coffee.”

She starts to walk away, hesitates and squints at me, then goes and fetches the java. When she’s setting down a steaming mug on the tabletop, though, she also slides into the booth across from me.

“Uhh…”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?”

She stares down at her fingernails for a second before looking up and elaborating. “Why you’re crying in a public restaurant. Can’t be anything good.”

“I’m not,” I say, but as I say it I reach up to my face and find that I have been crying. This crap is sending me off the deep end _so much _that I can’t even tell. Is it the meds? On the other hand, I thought the meds were supposed to keep me from feeling sad in the first place.

“Hmm,” she says with that quirky smile of hers. “Maybe I missed a memo, but last time I checked…”

“Very funny.” I sniffle a little. “I… oh, I’m not sure you really should have to care. It’s kind of just stupid teenage drama stuff.”

“That’s a lie.”

“What?”

“Stupid teenage drama stuff means you roll around on your bed, kicking your feet, throwing pillows at the walls and screaming,” she said, still smiling the same smile. “You don’t cry in public without knowing it. That’s a whole deeper level of sadness.”

My lip quivers, and I try to hold it back, but instead the tears keep streaming down my face. I’m not sobbing or shivering or bawling out loud or anything, I just have leaky eyes. It was actually really scary, so I then started to shake slightly.

“Drink.” When I focus on her, she points at my coffee. I take a sip. Somehow, the bitterness and the heat surge through me and blot out a little of the sharpness of my distraught state. Don’t ask me how it worked, but it worked. “Better?”

“A little.”

“Listen, if you don’t want to talk I can get lost, but… I have it on pretty good authority that I’m an excellent listener. It would be a shame to sneeze at such a handy resource.”

It all comes pouring out like a tsunami. I pretty much lead off with being a lesbian (or whatever it is that I am), and that did make her eyebrows go up but then again, she’s the woman who had the surrogate baby for the geriatric mom. I’d forgotten that Nina wasn’t quite as yokel-y as the other yokels. I even heard this rumour that her husband was gay and that's why he's not around anymore, but whatever, that's none of my business. She never looked disgusted with me, or even vastly surprised… worried, yeah, but I could handle worried.

“Hey,” she was saying when I finally stopped griping about Bright and Amy not realizing how their bickering affected me. “I don’t think anybody could blame you for getting ticked. I’ve known Bright as long as you have, and he’s always been…”

“A giant tool.”

“A bit insensitive,” she amended with a smirk. “But I'm sure he wasn't really trying to hurt you."

"That part I get," I sighed. "Just… why does it take him so long to figure this stuff out? Couldn't he tell by looking at us that making it all into a big joke was THE worst thing he could do?"

"Probably not. You know boys."

I gave a wry smile. "Not anymore."

"Right," she said with a nervous laugh. "Can't lie to you, I've never known any lesbians personally, but I do know _you_, Laynie. You're pretty guarded with your heart."

"Really?" That came as a shock to me. "Like how, guarded?"

"You just are. I've seen you come in here, how you act around your dates; they never have a chance to get to know you. True, most of the time they really didn't deserve one, but one or two of them probably would have turned out to be decent guys."

"So... are you saying I sabotaged myself with them because I was gay? Or are you saying that I'm hooking up with Amy because I'm straight, but too afraid of getting into a real relationship?"

"Neither one," she snorted, playing with the salt shaker to busy her idle hands. Nina was never the kind of woman to let herself sit around doing nothing. "More like... well, I guess that you just weren't willing to let anybody get in past your defences who didn't earn the right. Which is smart, even if it means you're a little lonely while you're waiting."

"But I..." I kind of gulped, then whispered, "I'm no virgin. I've messed around with a bunch of those guys who aren't 'good enough' for me."

"Like sex has much to do with a personal relationship," she whispered back. We both grinned because it was kind of heretical thinking around these parts, but my grin was a little wider because she had made me feel a lot better about that part. "It's a part of it, sure, but you can definitely get laid without maintaining any true bond with the other person. Take it from me."

That last statement made me wonder if the rumours about Carl Feeney were true, but I quickly kicked that to the curb and said, "You're right, I know you are. Just... now I feel bad for getting so angry. Bright is a douche-rocket, and this whole thing is wacked-out, but maybe I should have taken a deep breath and told him to shut up instead of running off like a chicken."

“Maybe. You could probably still tell him that what he said offended you. He might not think he did anything wrong, but then again, you might get through to him. Can’t hurt much to try.”

“Do you…” Deep breath, another sip of coffee, another deep breath. “Do you think… I need to apologise to Amy? For cutting out.”

“If you brought it up, that probably means you do, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so. She was just so, so… it’s like she almost forgot I was there because she was so wrapped up in arguing with Bright. Didn’t feel too hot.”

“Yeah, I can see how it wouldn’t.”

I looked around at the rest of the customers in Mama Joy’s. None of them were paying us any attention, all in conversation with old friends or nose-deep in the Pinecone or New York Times. My voice cracked when I asked, “Can you please not tell anybody about any of this… or that I didn’t even realise I was crying? Somehow I think that’s a lot bigger deal than you’re making it. I’m scared…”

“Oh, I dunno,” she told me gently. “I’ve done it a dozen times while Carl’s on the road and I’m trying to balance the house, the bills, the job and Sam all by myself. Love is rough and life is hard. Anybody who forgets that is pretty stupid.”

Nodding, I stood and placed a ten on the table. When she opened her mouth, a worry-line between her eyebrows, I whispered, “It’s a pretty crappy tip considering how good the service is here. Seriously, Mrs Feeney, I… thanks for the coffee.” Then I left before she could force me to take the money back. I knew she would try.

I cried all the way home. Mostly as a release now; I wasn’t even close to how upset as I was when I went into the diner. By the time I walked in the front door my face was dry and I was composed, so when my mother asked what I’d been up to, I easily faked nonchalance as I told her I was watching TV at Amy’s before going up to my room. Then I wrote in this damn thing. And now I’m going to take a nap.

Maybe I'll go back to St Margret's after the Summer's over. Dammit, I really, _really _thought I wouldn't have to...

_Laynie_


	19. ♦ NINETEEN ♦

I have a confession to make to you, Journal. It’s been hard to come to the point where I could, but here’s a thing I’ve been keeping from even you, even myself. I haven’t been taking Zoloft the way I used to. It’s… hard to put this in a way that doesn’t make me sound insane and self-destructive, but while it’s nice to numb myself, it’s also kind of frustrating. Floating through life as if it’s happening _around _me instead of _to _me isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So, unbeknownst to my doctor and my parents, I’ve been stepping it down for a while. Cutting the pills in half and taking a half instead of a whole for each dose. I feel a lot more like myself now, but it still helps keep me from falling into some suicidal black hole. Compromise, I guess.

That seemed important. Now let’s talk about whether or not Bright Abbott is a cock.

It was at school, at lunch. Picture Laynie all by her lonesome on one of the picnic tables outside. Amy was off doing some stupid prom thing, or a yearbook thing, I don’t know, and Bright ambushed me. I really wasn’t expecting him to come up, and even less was I expecting him to sit down across from me and say, “What’s up?”

“Uhh…” That was about as far as I could get.

“Sweet, you got butterscotch pudding!” He reached for it, but I moved to block.

“What do you want, dipstick?”

“Okay, okay, don’t start throwing peas at me,” he grunted, glancing at the uneaten green spheres in the corner of my tray. “Just wanted to say I was sorry.”

“Sorry. For?”

“For being… y’know,” he said with a shrug, scooping an entire chicken nugget into his mouth and almost swallowing it whole.

“For being a barnyard animal?”

“For messing with you guys. I guess that was rude or something.”

I gaped at him. Then I found my voice. “Yeah. Yeah, or something. You were total bastard. In fact, you’d have to go to obedience school for a few years to qualify for Bastard.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he said with a withering look. “Just don’t gay it up in my living room anymore, okay? God, like I don’t have enough trauma from trying to get my sister and my best friend together.”

“Nobody ever accused me of being _your _best friend. And I’d deny such accusations.”

“Not you, moron! Ephram.”

I blinked. “Oh. I mean… you tried to set them up?”

“Sure,” he sighed. “Not that it really worked. She was stuck on Crackhead Callahan and he was banging the babysitter. Glad that lameness is over now. To be honest, Madison got on my nerves; she was super fine, but all that ‘ehh, I’m too old, what are we gonna DO’ lost its freshness quick.”

“Somewhere in here you’re supposed to be apologising for threatening to _out _me to your sister’s parents.”

For a moment he just stared at me, spoonful of red Jell-o halfway to his mouth. “Didn’t I say that part?”

“Dude, come on!” I snapped. “You don’t think we’re already going crazy with this all by ourselves? Like we need close family members laughing and cracking jokes at our expense?” I leaned forward a little and hissed in a tone that was too quiet for anyone else to hear, but plenty loud to ring in his ears. “I’M A FUCKING _QUEER_, YOU ASSWIPE!”

I watched him actually go all pale. That was pretty well worth it.

Almost a minute went by, in which I distractedly sipped my chocolate milk. Then he whispered, “Man. I… God, like I have any clue what that’s like, but… doesn’t sound easy.”

“It’s _not_ easy. It’s like swallowing fire.” Then I gave him a tight smile. “You wanna know something weird? Every moment I spend dealing with this makes me feel guilty for not dealing with Colin. Did you hear what I said? I feel _guilty _on top of scared and confused and alone. It’s like, super bonus inner-conflict.”

At Colin’s name, he dropped his spoon and just sat there, staring at (through?) his tray. I get that; they were best friends and teammates and all. Plus, he was in the truck with Colin; the whole ordeal was a little more first-hand for him. Finally, he told me in a quiet voice, “Yeah. Seriously, Laynie… my bad. I was a jerk, I shouldn’t have done that, I… I was just trying to mess with Amy because she always acts so superior, like she’s-”

“I did have an older brother. You get that, right? Somewhere in the dusty corners of my mind I remember what sibling rivalry was like.”

“Ephram said this thing had you all twisted up in knots,” he nodded. “Man, I feel like the biggest idiot ever.”

My eyebrows shot up. It's too bad I got distracted, because it would have been gratifying to pounce on that “biggest idiot ever” line and milk it for all it was worth. “Ephram said? You talked to him about this?” Blood pounded in my ears. “You talked to _anybody _about this?!”

“Not like that!” he said defensively, holding his hands up in front of himself. “I… yeah, I know that sounds like I tattled or whatever, but naw, it wasn’t that kind of-”

“You- you are such a- GOD, Bright! Why? What did I ever do to you?”

Running a hand through his curly blond hair as if checking to see if he looked as nervous as he felt or something, he hissed, “He figured it out! I was acting all thoughtful – which we both know is out-of-bounds for me on a normal day – and he asked why, and I said it was 'cos you were pissed at me, and then he just kinda… made the connection. We both did.”

“Made the connection? You mean you compared notes?”

“It’s like that thing, you know? Where you say, ‘What _about _Laynie?’ and the other guy says, ‘I dunno, what did _you _hear about Laynie?’ and the first guy goes, ‘Probably something more important than _you _heard’ until you kinda meet in the middle. Neither of us came right out and told, I swear to God, okay?”

“So what did he say?” I was feeling awfully furious at Ephram right about then.

“Just that I should apologise… and stop giving Amy shit. He was really defensive of Amy.” Small chuckle. “Always has been, though, right? Since the dawn of freaking time.”

I folded my arms over my chest, so self-conscious, so exposed out there in the chilly breeze with nothing but a picnic table to hide under. “I’m so glad it takes one of your buddies smacking you around to admit you did something wrong. That’s really evolved.”

“I was gonna apologise anyway,” he said with a shrug. “Just… well, after talking to E, I saw I had more to apologise _for _than I thought. Sorry, man.”

Suddenly I laughed. “You’re still calling him ‘E’? He hates that, you know.”

Bright was already making this uncomfortable face, then he leaned over and whispered, “Is this like one of those sorority experimenting things, where you're gonna quit doing it and go back to normal, or... do I have to worry about walking in on you guys all the time? No offense, but it's weird enough watching my sister swap spit with a guy, and... well, you know what I'm sayin', right?”

I sure did. It was an incredibly _uncaring_ thing for him to say, but whatever, I kinda got it. But I wasn't going to go easy on him, either. No way. “Dude... no. This is reality, not a pillow-fight in a porno. I'm going out with Amy.” I gulped. “We're like, _together _together. For now.”

Up until that point, he had been getting greener and greener until he looked more like the peas on my tray than a classmate. When he heard the last part, though, his head snapped up. “For now? What's that mean?”

“It means... I don't know what it means.” I gave him this pleading look, hoping to God he'd get what I meant. “Bright... I'm not really sure what we're doing. I've never had any long-term relationships, not with guys, girls, Chia Pets... I'm kind of fucked up in the head. Maybe I'm hurting Amy by being with her when I'm so fucked up, or maybe not, but I... I don't know if I'm even capable of making something like this work. I might not be. Which would make the the most horrible bitch in the world.”

He swallowed, clearly regretting entering this _Night Gallery_ conversation. (If I wasn't writing this in pen, I'd go back and change that to “Twilight Zone” since I know I'm probably the only person in my age demographic that's ever heard of “Night Gallery”.) “Yyyeah. Anyhow, I just wanted to, y'know, apologise and all that, and now I guess I'm gonna-”

“Right,” I sighed, nodding and almost half-looking at him. “Good, fine, go. Nice knowing you.”

He was already on his feet and halfway from the table when he paused. Then, without turning, he said something to me... something unexpectedly wise coming from his big empty noggin. “We're all fucked up, anyway, y'know? Your version of it is just brand X, while most of the rest of us have brand Y or Z. But it's all the same crap when you open the boxes.”

Then I was alone with my thoughts again. Which is why I turned to you. Don't laugh at me for bringing the stupid journal to school. I just feel like I gotta have it on hand now, in case my head starts overflowing and I need to dump it out on the paper. _I heard that! _Screw you for laughing.

Final verdict? I guess he's not a cock. Not completely.

_Laynie_


	20. ♦ TWENTY ♦

Ummm...

“We need to talk.”

This was what I was greeted with after school from my supposed “romantic partner”. Fun openers like that have started wars, I'm pretty sure.

“About what?”

Sighing, she sarcastically told me, “About Papua New Guinea.”

“I hear it's a pretty mysterious place.” Sarcasm doesn't work on me. I destroy it with extreme prejudice. “Awesome surfing, too. Why, wanna head down there this Summer and shoot the curl?”

“No, I... since when do _you _surf?”

I smiled big enough to show off my dimples. On purpose. “You just wanna see me in a wetsuit.” And, on cue, her entire face turned red as a stop light.

“Cut that out!” she whispered. We hadn't yet made it to her car, and she kept casting wary glances around at all the lingering kids. Makes a girl feel special. “Look, we need to talk about you and me. About the fact that now we're an item.”

“Ooh, an 'item'. I always hated that term... makes couples sound like some junk you might have to take out of your shopping basket right before the checkout so you can use the Express Lane.”

“Laynie!”

I stopped walking and turned, sighing. “What? For the love of Mike, what's your damage? As far as I knew, things have been going pretty well.”

“They have,” Amy hissed as she bolted for the car. She didn't continue until we were both safely within its confines. “But, I m-mean... that was a close call, with Bright.”

“You can call off the dogs, Ames. Bright's cool now, we talked it out.”

“Yeah, _Bright _is cool, but you and me aren't.” She tucked that ornery strand of hair away again and whispered (even though nobody could hear us through the car doors), “We're still, y'know... homosexuals.”

“Homo sapiens, you say?” I cried with mock horror.

“How fourth grade. Anyway, it's... the thing is, there could be another 'Bright Incident' at any time. Mom and Dad could walk in – yours or mine – or what if it was Ephram? God, the last thing I need is him finding out about this and trying to, like, ask me if I needed help shaving my pubes or something crazy.”

Ignoring the way her mind unexpectedly leapt to landing strips, I cleared my throat and said, “Uhh... well, there's something I should probably tell you. We're not, uh, as anonymous as you seem to think.”

“What do you mean?”

Five minutes later...

“_ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR STUPID HEAD?!”_

“Amy, calm down,” I sighed. “So I flipped a little. I needed somebody outside the situation to listen, and they both helped. Besides, it's not like I told Kayla or Page or somebody who would make a public service announcement before the day was out.”

“OOOH, this is so unacceptable!” she burst out, beating her forehead against the steering wheel. “How could you? How could you blab to them without letting me in on it first, without even asking?!”

“Amy-”

“Ephram _and _Mrs Feeney? Telling our secret to one person wasn't bad enough, you had to make it a hat trick?”

“Isn't a hat trick three points, not two?”

Amy glared at me. “Maybe we could count Bright as the third.”

“That's not fair,” I said, feeling a pinprick of anger. “That was nobody's fault, not mine, not yours.”

“It was _too _your fault! I told you I wasn't ready to fool around that much, but you insisted, and of course we were practically naked when he walked in!”

It felt like I had been slapped. She was blaming me for this. She was BLAMING me for us being together. “Okay. Let's really sit down and think about this. Who's fault is it _really _that we were making out on your parents' couch? Maybe it could be yours.”

“I don't see how!”

“You're the one who had to lose her virginity!” I shouted. “You couldn't just let it happen, wait for the right guy! You had to enlist your best girl-friend in your quest to rip yourself open!”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh great, here we go. It's all my fault for being curious.”

“Curious, nothing! You were _rabid!_ I had to loan you my dildo, and then when you got cold feet I had to use it on you! I've never felt so obligated toward somebody in my life!”

Cheeks glowing, her voice rose, too. “So that's how our sex life is to you? An obligation?”

“_What _sex life? We've never had any! I mean, I helped you out _once, _before we even decided we were all lesbian for each other, and since then you turned into some kind of, of... gun-shy geisha!”

“Honestly, Laynie, I don't think you really wanna have sex with me, anyway,” she said in that superior tone Bright had just been griping about so very recently. “All you wanna do is push my buttons and make me look all naïve and stupid.”

“Like I really gotta try,” I muttered.

She turned those huge eyes on me, now huger than ever. “Seriously? My grades could run rings around yours, and you seriously think I'm stupid?”

“Listen to yourself! Do you sound like you're leading a symposium on cold fusion? Besides, _I'm_ not the one who's been flunking all my classes this year, Little Miss Almost-Dropout!”

There was a long bout of glaring. I went too far. I knew I did, but I couldn't stop it from coming out – she was being so impossible! Even so, I didn't mean to say she was stupid, and I _really _didn't mean to point out her academic underachievement of late. It was kind of a sore spot not just with her, but between her and her parents. God, I swear I cut myself on my razor-wit almost as much as I cut other people with it.

Amy started the car. “Whatever, I'm taking you home. There you can sit around and be the 'wise one' all you want.”

“No, I'll walk home.”

“Forget it! You don't get to take the high road and walk all the way home from here, leaving me feeling guilty over being _entitled _or whatever for having the car!”

Surprised at this half-assed logic (She was _forcing _me to accept her offer of a ride? _Whaaat?_), I instead sighed and said, “Can we at least stop listening to Seal? I'm so not feeling him right now.”

“You will listen to Seal and you will like it,” she growled as she shifted into reverse. “And you will appreciate the heartbreaking beauty that is his third album that nobody else listened to!”

Rolling my eyes, I slouched down in the seat and clammed up for the rest of the trip. The annoying part is, she's right: the album's not so bad. As if I was in any mood to admit that to her.

Hence I came to be alone in my room once more, praying for my meds to kick in... and kicking myself until they do. Damn meds. Damn me.

_Laynie_


	21. ♦ TWENTY-ONE ♦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [AO3 NOTE: Always was sort of proud of this little poem. Probably the only decent one I'll ever write, haha.]

Clinical Disillusion, a poem.

Here I stand, heart in hand  
Feeling like a one-man band  
Feet in the clouds and head in the sand  
Bleeding my adrenal gland.

Everything has come undone  
What was two dwindles to one  
And nobody’s having any fun;  
This darkness coats a dying sun.

I thought they gave me what I need  
That would make my hate recede.  
Doctors told me to take heed  
And prescribed me legal speed.

But nothing works and nothing changes  
Chemical that just estranges  
Now I’m splashing down in stages  
And ruining these once-clean pages.

_Laynie_


	22. ♦ TWENTY-TWO ♦

OH MY FRELLING GOD, that was so emo. Why oh why oh _why_ did I let myself write a poem? I really must need copious amounts of medication if that’s the kind of crap bumping around inside my cranium. Coffee houses of Colorado, be on the lookout for a Zoloft-doped girl in a black leotard, carrying patchouli and bongos… you may need to call a cab to take me back to Everwood. By force, if necessary.

Worst part: yes, I was really listening to Dashboard Confessional while I wrote that. Somebody axe-murder me.

Amy and I are doing way better now than we were when I wrote that monstrosity (the words “offal” and “toxic sludge” come to mind). Not copacetic, but better, little by little. There’s strain, but at least we’re hanging around and talking, holding hands when we feel up to it.

And… well, we had phone sex again. It was so wild, it just happened; she called me to ask me a question for math, then we got to talking about silly stuff, and from there we got, uh, turned on and, uh… then other stuff happened. What, do you need a diagram?

To me that’s kind of weird, since we haven’t even kissed since the night Bright crashed the party. But whatevs. We’ll come around to each other sooner or later, right? Yeah.

I kind of got into another fight with my mom today. She found a few of my cut-up Zoloft and accused me of grinding them up and snorting them – you know, as if they would have the same effect as cocaine. Right. All the cool kids are snorting _Zoloft._ Isn’t that, like, completely lethal anyway?

There are so many other drugs that are much more fun. And we’ll pretend that I don’t know which. And we’ll also state for the record that I don’t know from personal experience.

Moving on, I kind of bailed after that to give my mom time to calm down and stop tearing out her hair. I was on my way to Mama Joy’s when I passed the old train station, and I smiled. Doc Brown (holy shit, I just realized... he should totally build me a DeLorean that can send me to the Fifties) and Amy’s grandma were probably in there right now, bustling around and giving out their pro bono medical care. Oddly, I found my feet taking me inside, and it wasn’t until I was there and had been asked a question that I really knew why.

“What can I do ya for, Private?” Edna asked me. I think it's a holdover from her being an army medic, but she always calls everybody younger than her “Private”. Which really is everybody but her husband, Irv; he might in fact be older than Everwood, but still acts younger than me half the time. He’s a riotous retiree (see what I did there?).

“I, uh… I just had a quick question for Dr Brown, if he’s free,” I heard myself saying.

“Well, grab a seat and we’ll see if Sarge can get you on the roster.”

I sat. I waited, I kicked at the scuffed legs of my chair, I flipped through an _Elle_. Finally, I saw old Mr Jensen ambling out of the exam room and Andy Brown followed in his white lab coat. He was about to say something to Mrs Harper when he spotted me and his face lit up. “Laynie Hart!”

“That’s me.”

“She wanted a brief consultation,” Edna told him as if I wasn’t there; standard procedure or something. “You got a minute?”

“Sure, of course; we have a pretty light schedule today. Come on inside.”

I followed him into his office instead of the exam room, which was fine because I didn’t think I’d be needing one of those drafty backless gowns just to ask him. “Shoot.”

“Shoot?”

“Shoot,” he repeated, folding his hands in his lap and twiddling his thumbs. “Straight from the hip. What's on your mind?”

“Well… I know Dr. Abbott is our usual doctor and all, but I’d rather talk to somebody else about this, and uh…”

“I’m the only other game in town.”

“Yep.”

He nodded as if he was used to that logic coming with the stories of everybody he’d treated since setting up shop in the train station. “Well, go on.”

“This is gonna be confidential, right? Gotta cover my bases.”

“Bases covered. Let’s have it.”

"I'm thinking about going off Zoloft."

He blinked, then smiled slightly. "I wasn't aware you were on Zoloft. Then again, you could probably fill an encyclopaedia with things I'm not aware of. Why are you considering stopping the dosage?"

"Because it... it makes me feel safe, and happy, and content. I hate that." He raised an eyebrow. "It's fake. Everything feels fake all the time, and I keep wondering if I’m doing the right things, or if… if the medication is screwing my life up. Are all my bad decisions really _my _bad decisions? I'd rather be feeling real misery than artificial bliss."

"Ah," he said with a slight nod. "Well, then, you'll have to talk to Dr Abbott about it eventually, since he's the one prescribing the antidepressants."

"Yeah, I know I will."

"But you don't want to. Mind if I ask why? You don't necessarily have to answer."

"Go ahead. Ask why." He grinned his patented SuperBeard grin and repeated his question, and I smiled back. "Well... if one of them knows, they'll all know. The Abbotts. Since I'm friends with Amy and Bright, and their parents are more like parents to me than my own, it's... I guess awkward? It's awkward having them know my business. My weakness."

"It's not really a weakness," he reassured me, his tone taking on that earnestness he was famous (infamous?) for. “Anyone can be susceptible to any one of a million conditions within the mind, ranging from depression to autism to genuine psychosis. More often than not it’s out of our control. Blaming the patient is not only futile, but harmful to them and to those around them. Throws kerosene on the fire.”

“Yeah, they gave me the handy installation guide,” I quipped. “I just wanna know if it’s safe for me to dial this stuff back.”

Nodding, he took a deep breath before beginning. “Well, if you were my patient, first I’d recommend stepping down the dosage before going cold turkey.”

“Done.”

“Done?”

“Myself.” I squirmed. “I’ve… kinda been… chopping my pills in half. I hope I’m not about to turn into some foaming, rabid dog or anything.”

“Unlikely,” he laughed. “It’s better to let the doctor handle such matters, but to be honest with you this strikes me as a good sign; you’re feeling good enough to reason that the level of sertraline hydrochloride in your system might be higher than is really necessary, and you can make your own judgement that it’s time to cut back. It’s encouraging. And I wouldn’t worry about chopping the pills in half versus a lower dosage tablet, it shouldn’t matter. What dosage were you on before?”

“Fifty. I took it at breakfast.”

“And how long have you been halving that?”

“Um… about two or three weeks?” When he just nodded, I quietly asked, “Is that… bad? I know there’s higher dosages, though, so I thought-”

“No, no, it isn’t bad at all. Just thinking.” I waited a little bit longer, and at last he sat up straighter and sighed. “Okay. My professional opinion is that in another week you could be safely taken off the medication, if you feel you’re ready. But obviously I can’t be the one to do that for you.”

“Okay.”

“You haven’t been experiencing any withdrawal symptoms?” He said, absently scratching something down on his clipboard. “Headaches, dizziness, crying… agitation?”

“Agitation is part of being in high school.” He chuckled, no doubt thinking about Ephram. “Um… you said crying. Isn’t it normal to cry, though?”

“Of course, of course. Sometimes people coming down off an SSRI can start crying without reason, or without knowing they’re doing it, that’s all.”

I hesitated. This was going to yank everything to a crashing halt. “Um…”

“Yes?”

“I have, once or twice,” I told him. “Started crying. I mean, there was a reason, a pretty good reason, but… but once I didn’t realize until somebody pointed it out.”

“Oh.”

“I’m cracking up. That’s it, that’s the end of the road to sanity.”

“No, no,” he soothed, frowning. Probably thinking even while he was talking to me with that genius brain of his. “Don’t worry so much. Have you had any of those other symptoms? Nightmares or anxiousness?”

“Not really. I mean, I’m anxious about normal stuff, but not randomly paranoid or anything like that.” I was hedging, if you couldn’t tell; hedging around the fact that Amy and I had been such a trigger lately. “Are you sure I’m not losing it?”

“You sound pretty lucid to me,” he said with a smile. “Tell you what; you can tell the same thing to Dr Abbott in a week. Tell him you’ve been lowering your dosage as long as you have and ask him if he approves of a temporary abstention; if he’s no more concerned about the lability than I am, he’ll likely recommend follow-up visits to make sure you don’t need it anymore. Sound like a plan?”

Biting my lip, I nodded.

Edna pounded me on the back when I emerged and called me a “good soldier”, which I took as a compliment, and then I toddled away. On the one hand, this is positive news, right? No more drugs to swallow every fricking morning with an orange juice chaser. On the other hand, now I was actually _more _scared of my decision to halve the pills than I ever had been.

The crying was a symptom of withdrawal. That weird thing in Mama Joy’s had been more than a fluke, it had been _symptomatic._ Would I wind up killing myself if I went cold turkey now?

Which is why I didn’t go to Mama Joy’s. Instead, I went into the forest. Just picked a spot and headed straight into the trees. A girl is allowed to take a walk, isn’t she? I drifted through the trees and touched their branches, wrote my name on patches of unmelted snow in shady spots… kicked pine cones. Wasted time. Took a breath. It was helpful, ratcheted back all my stressing.

Now I’m going over to Amy’s. I stopped in Mama Joy’s after all, and the marshmallows in the shape of a smiley face in my hot chocolate told me that Nina remembered our conversation and was pulling for me. In a weird way, stupid marshmallows helped more than a lot of the other stuff had. Maybe I’m not in such a bad place after all.

_Laynie_


	23. ♦ TWENTY-THREE ♦

Good evening. I’m Laynie Hart with your late night drama report.

Let’s go back to the afternoon. I knocked at Amy’s and she answered. I’m gonna skip over that conversation because all it was was some brief bickering, a few rude gestures and a slamming door.

Then I called her after I left. She answered and snapped, “_What?!”_

“Can’t we try to do this with less angst?”

“Yes,” she sighed grudgingly. “I’m really sorry, I… I know we’re having a thing, but I was way out of line at the door, I should have at least let you talk.”

“Yeah, you should have. But let’s talk now. There’s… can I come back, or do we actually have to do this shit on the phone?”

I doubled back, but she just pushed past me and closed the door, then headed to her car. Standing there and seething, I thought for sure she was driving off when she rolled down the window and yelled out, “Well? Are you getting in or not?”

We didn’t speak until we parked and got out. That’s when I realized we were at-

“The _Point?!”_

“Yes, the Point,” she sighed. “What about it?”

“Suddenly we’re skipping over the whole ‘talking things out and coming to an understanding’ phase and going straight to 'making up in the sweatiest way'?”

Amy smiled bitterly. “Actually, just because this is commonly used as a place for juniors and seniors to crawl all over each other doesn't mean we can't also sit and talk here, too. It’s pretty.”

I looked out the windshield at the breathtaking view of snow-capped mountains. “Yeah, big fat hairy deal.” The shine wears off after the first few years of growing up here.

Ten minutes passed. I mean it. You're probably sure I'm exaggerating, like, “Oh wow, yeah right, I bet it was just ten seconds that felt like ten minutes.” No, I am dead serious; I actually watched the clock on the dashboard keep track of this ordeal. Both of us had a lot to say but couldn't get it out, and it was like the Flayed, Filleted and Flambéed Part Two.

“I'm sorry I said you were stupid.”

“You damn well better be.”

“Aren't you sorry for anything at all?” I snapped. “You're totally blameless, is that how this works? The Great Amy Abbott is beyond reproach?”

“YES.” A few more seconds. “Maybe not.”

Then we spent another minute or so feeling queasy. Just shifting, hating what this was doing to us. How we couldn't seem to connect anymore, even though we were supposed to be connecting even more deeply than we had when we were “just friends”. How was it that everybody always says that sex is taking things to the “next level”, but I feel like Amy and I had taken a step back down to the previous level instead?

I missed her. I missed really being _with_ her when we were together, not just existing as two entities occupying nearby spaces. I missed... _belonging _with her.

Suddenly we launched ourselves at each other. It was totally in synch, unconscious, instantaneous, and went so smoothly it was like we rehearsed it. My fingernails were leaving lasting impressions in her scalp and she was trying to tie our tongues in knots and somehow I ended up in her lap and then we were _topless _and then we were _BOTTOMLESS_...

And then I was back in my seat, both of us were panting, and there was more than a little panic going on.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. Then a little bit of amusement mixed with the panic when she said, “Oh my God, we're half-naked in my _car._”

“You put a rip in my leggings,” I noticed. “Really wanted 'em off, huh?”

She just grinned at me. “Maybe so.”

“We still need to talk,” I said, pushing my thighs together when I realized that's where her eyes were pointed. “And it's gonna be hard to do that while being ogled, so... back on with the clothes?”

“Let's stay like this. I...” Her voice caught a little. “I like being so open with you. I hate how we've been instead lately, it's like, the worst.”

“Oh. Okay, I guess.”

“Listen, I'm sorry I've been so mad at you, there's really no reason for it, just... I was actually pissed at Bright, I know it's dumb that I took it out on you and I'm really-”

“I'm thinking about going off the meds.” It just forced itself up and out of my throat, and I looked up at her afterward, frightened. “M-maybe as soon as next week.”

“Really?” she said, pretty clearly startled by the switch in topics. “Uhh... that's great, I guess. Are you sure you're ready to quit?”

“Pretty sure.” I shrugged, hating the way my voice shook. “After the thing with Bright, I kind of had a tiny breakdown all over Nina, as you kinda sorta know. But you don't know that it took her telling me I was breaking down for me to be aware of it. Shit like that scares me. I don't wanna live my life like that, so... so the sooner I cut out the meds, the sooner I can get back to feeling like a human being.”

Amy smiled and turned up the CD player. “Really?”

I rolled my eyes. “Not Seal again. I don't care if you're making a joke because of something I said, I don't really want to listen to this schlock right n-”

“Are you sure?”

Then she leaned over and stroked my bare stomach, causing me to shiver. When I felt her lips on my shoulder, I twitched away from her grasp. “W-weren't we talking about something?”

“Nah.”

“My meds,” I reminded her. “Come on, you seriously don't care about-”

“No.” When she caught the look on my face she rolled her eyes. “You do what you think is best. I'm gonna be here for you either way, so don't sweat it. If you go catatonic, I'll drive you to the emergency room. If you scream and throw small objects at me, though, I'm still gonna hold you to it; Zoloft withdrawal is _not _a standing excuse to give me a lump on the noggin.”

Gulping, I fended off a hand that was dangerously close to my chest. “Then we still need to talk about whether or not we... we're together, or you're just experimenting, or what's going on, because the confusion is killing me. What-”

“I want you,” she told me with such frankness that I almost wet myself – or made myself wet. “Being kept away from you by this ridiculous bull, it's so ugly to me now that I can't believe we let it happen. So let's throw it away. Let's get a big huge cannon and shoot the what-ifs and we-can'ts to Hell.”

“Amy,” I said, and then moaned it again when she put her lips to my shoulder again. It was the most romantic thing anybody had ever done to me, way above and beyond what any guy had done... and I felt myself crying again. This time I fully felt it welling up and spilling over. “Amy...”

My bra was off. Amy had taken it off, Amy was touching me there... Amy was enjoying it. Amy was all over me! I never would have believed she could be this confident and in control about this, but the honest truth was, my being shaken up about the medication situation (haha) had kind of relegated me to “bottom” status, putting Amy on the dominant end of the spectrum. Which scared me even more, making me even less likely to try to “take back” any power. I felt powerless... and I didn't care. I just liked being touched by her flesh so much that it smoothed over my worries enough so I could let her continue.

While she was sitting in my lap, kissing me like there was no tomorrow, I reached for her back and did the same for her, and when our chests touched we gasped. The last time we had done that was in the junior high showers, doing a chest-bump because our volleyball team in gym had beaten the other one; in other words, a totally non-sexual thing. This time, on the other hoof... it was electric.

I don't even know if I can keep describing this to you. My hands were on her ass, she was tugging at my short, black hair. Kissing, touching, grinding... sweating... and then I felt a hand going down the front of my leggings.

“WHOA!” I gasped. Panted, sang... told her in some really noisy way. “W-wait, not here! Are you kidding? The _Point?!”_

“What's wrong with the Point?” she asked while nibbling my ear. She likes to nibble.

“Ah, it... _nnhh,_ I guess nothing, but w-we... we could go back to your place and get the-”

“No toys,” she whispered. “Not our first time. I want this to be just me and you and our skin.”

“And _Seal?!”_ I chided, to get her back for how many liberties she was taking. But instead of taking the bait, she grinned wickedly.

“Every couple needs a song.”

Then her hand went a little further down, and I forgot to care about what was on the radio. OH GOD, it was somehow absolutely nothing like being done by myself or by a guy, it was... she was _skilled_. And she worked fast! Damn, it hardly took five minutes and I was reaching my end.

She sounded like she was reaching the end, too. I knew she wasn't, but she was so _into _my pleasure that it was like she was just flying solo. I did start kneading her ass cheeks toward the end, to drive her up the wall, give her a preview of what was to come. And eventually, once I had felt for one shining moment like _I _was the very center of the whole universe, she fell back and let me show her my appreciation.

It makes a funny noise when you shove two fingers into something that moist, you know that? I really did almost laugh, but I was afraid she'd punch me in the throat so I choked it back. And don't start whining about how vulgar this is getting; nobody forced you to keep reading my craziness at gunpoint, did they? Even if they did, you're getting off easy (look, a double entendre!).

Oh, it was so good. It was so GOOD! It was like, “Here's the genuine article, and all those boys were cheap stand-ins all along” kind of good. Freaked me out, but also made me feel like... like I was a girl-Pinocchio turned into a real young lady. Something along those lines.

That's right, everybody; I lost my lesbirginity to the “Kiss From A Rose” guy. And it wasn't even _that_ song, which would have made total sense, right? On the bright side, at least it wasn't “Fly Like An Eagle”; that would have been harrowing.

Oh, before I close, hang on... there's a post-script to this scandalous account.

Near-nude and coated in perspiration, we lounged with the seats leaned all the way back for a long while afterward. Amy cracked a window and we fanned our faces, then just flopped back, out of energy. Finally, when we were almost breathing evenly again, I cleared my throat and said, “You know, I just thought of an upside to this whole mess...”

“Hmm?”

“At least we can't get each other pregnant. We'll save a fortune on Trojans.”

Amy snorted. “You really _are_ all about the silver lining, aren't you?”

“Damn straight, Blondie.”

_Laynie_


	24. ♦ TWENTY-FOUR ♦

Dude... I'm in L-O-V-E.

That's it.

_Laynie_


	25. ♦ TWENTY-FIVE ♦

Hi. It's Laynie. Who else would it be?

It's been a few days, and I'm even more into Amy than I was when I wrote that sappy six-word journal entry. It's like, why in God's name wasn't I dating girls before this? Why wasn't I dating them when I was at the all-girls' school?! Easy pickings and wide variety!

Psych. Nah, I'm not turning _that _gay. In fact, I'm not even sure we could really be classified as lesbians if we've never dated any other women... can you still own it if you’re monogamous? Whatever, I'm not all that worked up about the supposed rules; as far as I'm concerned, I'm never going to date anybody who's not Amy again, so all those labels are kind of academic.

Bright still gives us grief, but it's way toned down. Good-natured ribbing, which I can totally handle; it means he's in our corner. Ephram asks how we are now and then. I tried to give him shit for talking to Bright about us behind our backs, but I think he's super bummed about losing Madison for good and trying not to bring us down with his moping, so I gave him a pass on the guilt trip. I hope he knows I'm there when he needs somebody to bitch at.

We have indeed used the Voracious Violet Variety Pack by now. Once. It was... raunchy. What, you want me to lie to you and say it was just as “beautiful” as without toys? Well, it's not, but it's still special. And _really_ hot! But I think I prefer to have Amy all to myself, just touching, caressing, lips... most of the time, anyway.

Of course, nobody's even considering getting rid of the toys. Not _ever_. In fact, we've used Old Blue, Voracious Violet _and _the lace teddy all in the same session. How's that for a mental mural?

The most embarrassing thing that's happened since we “consummated” is when we were in Mama Joy's in the back booth, laughing and talking about some text she had got from Kayla or whatever (so beside the point) and Nina put her hands on both of our shoulders and asked how we were doing. The particular implication in her tone made all the colour drain from Amy's face, but I just laughed and told her we were fine.

“In fact, we're in seventh heaven,” I amended with a big grin. “The state of being, not the smarmy TV show.”

“Great,” she told us in an undertone. “Between the crying and all, you girls did have me a little worried. Glad to hear it all worked itself out.”

“N-no worries,” Amy whispered, glowing now that her colour had come back (with a vengeance). “Life is a b-bowl of cherries, right, Laynie?”

“Don't mind her,” I said conspiratorially. “She's a very timid, demure dyke.”

While Nina laughed, Amy sank lower in the booth. Which made Nina ruffle her hair as if she were a sad puppy. Which she kind of is most of the time.

Neither of us have discussed our futures together, or coming out or anything dangerous. It’s like, in the back of our minds every minute of the day, though; how we’d react if suddenly everybody knew, how we’d handle it, what we’d do first or if we’d even do anything at all. To be honest, even though Amy’s the most nervous about it becoming locker room gossip, I have this feeling she’d be the first one to tell everybody it was none of their business. I’d probably just keep my head down and pretend I didn’t hear anyone.

Knock on wood, we haven’t had to find out yet.

The more we’re together, the more I’m struck by something: I could look at her all day. A secret part of me always thought she was pretty, but before it was like, “God, I wish I was that conventionally cute.” I’m cute, don’t get me wrong; no unhealthy self-image thing going on in my head, thanks. But I’m a weird, dark kind of cute. If I had lost Colin and the attentions of my parents a few years earlier than I did, I’m pretty sure I’d have gone _goth _or something. Dark eyes, dark hair, dark outlook… and the occasional angsty poetry (haha). All that’s missing are fishnets and black leather to contrast the caked-on white foundation. Dodged a bullet there, right? Maybe not.

But Amy is… golden hair and sunshine, and supermodel proportions, and grace and beauty (from ballet, duh). I’m just this skinny doe-eyed freak next to her; by myself I’m almost attractive, but when we’re out together they always ask Amy if she wants to “grab a soda” or whatever their line is that week. Never me, always Amy. I got used to that a long time ago.

Maybe this is my revenge on the universe that stuck me with a best friend so much cuter than me: _I’m _the one who gets her now. All those guys that passed me over for her are shit out of luck because the “trippy chick” cut them off. Sorry Ephram, sorry Tommy Callahan… it’s me, not you.

No, that wasn’t bitchy at all.

Tomorrow night is our stupid Junior Prom. Bright still keeps trying to set Ephram and Amy up together, I think because he wants a ready excuse to hide the fact that his sister’s gone butch (even though she hasn't). Neither of them is going for it. We’ll see how that’s going to turn out, I guess.

Oops, that’s Amy calling; I have to go shut the door while I answer. Catch you later.

_Laynie_


	26. ♦ TWENTY-SIX ♦

Sorry, I was totally going to write some more after I hung up with Amy but, well… let’s just say by the end of that conversation I was so tired that I couldn’t get myself out of bed. And that’s all we’re going to say, got it?

Now you get to hear about _Prom, _though!

Bright’s crazy plans to utilise his “Promebago” kind of made everything disgustingly uncomfortable for everybody who wasn’t Bright and his like, 87 dates. Poor Ephram, who was sitting around looking all forlorn with no lady-friend on his arm… so Amy and I made an executive decision.

We both turned into his dates. At first he kept rolling his eyes and telling us to get lost, that he didn’t need “pity companionship”, but we were so earnest and giggly that he got caught up in it and stopped fighting. Bright and Ephram really looked like princes at the dance with multiple girls apiece; everybody expected that kind of thing from the blonde ex-jock, but Ephram? _Ephram Brown _scored _two chicks?! _We knew what everybody would be talking about all week.

Then it turned out he needed us because he ran into good old Madison Kellner when we stopped into a convenience store for some kind of refreshment. I was watching from down the aisle and… yow. Poor, poor Ephram. I mean, it’s not like he’s a blameless saint or anything, but he was really suffering with this. Madison’s smile was too nice; she should either have been sadder-looking or been completely cold to him. Didn’t she know the first thing about break-up etiquette?

So Amy and I dragged him back to the ugly Winnebago and massaged his shoulders and let him gripe.

“She should just get out of here,” he said grumpily. “You know how hard it is to survive in a town where your ex still lives? A small town like this one? It’s like dental surgery without anesthesia.”

“Aww, poor baby,” I cooed, kneading into his tense neck muscles. “Big bad babysitter stomped on his fragile widdle heart.”

“Cut it out,” Amy laughed.

“Nah. Nah, she’s right,” he said, sitting up and further loosening his tie until he could yank it off. Taking the hint, I dropped my hands. “I’m all Prom-ed out. Takin’ a walk.”

“We’ll come with you,” Amy said automatically.

“Nah, you guys hang back,” he said with a slight smile. “I, uh, have a feeling you’d like to spend one or two seconds of this huge formal-wear date actually dating each other instead of handing me Kleenex.”

“You were gonna cry?” I yelped with a fake-hurt expression. “I wanted to see that.”

Rolling his eyes yet again, he stepped off the enormous vehicle. We didn’t even know where Bright went, and the lame kid he’d paid off to drive us around was asleep in the front. Alone at last. I said as much.

“Stop,” she whispered, even though she smiled a little. “I’m too worried about Ephram to have any fun now.”

“You’re worried about the Manhattan Menace when you’ve got some genuine Laynie ready to be deflowered?”

Amy finally grinned and pulled me into her lap. “You do make it hard to stay focused on other things,” she admitted. “How does she spin my head?”

“Like a record, baby.”

We were just getting hot and heavy when we heard the door pop open, and I quickly dropped into a neighboring seat. It’s fine, we never let ourselves get past the “chaste” stage of making out so there wasn’t any damage control to do, really; just one corsage to slide back into its rightful place.

“Hail the conquering hero!” Bright was crowing. Somehow, he had two girls in his arms. It defied the laws of physics. “Where the hell’s Ephram? I wanna tell him about this thing Cheryl just showed me, it’s freaking BEYOND BELIEF!”

“Kind of was,” Nikki giggled.

“Had to get some air,” I told Bright. “Uh… we had a Kellner Encounter.”

“Ah, crap,” he sighed, a tiny bit of his exuberance vaporising on the spot. “How long’s he gonna be like this? ‘Wah, wah, wah, my life is over, I wanna curl up with my blankie.’ I wish he’d get over it already.”

Amy pursed her lips. “Wow, you make some amazing best friend, don’t you?”

“You know what I mean. E is way better than moping over that ho; if she dumped a guy that awesome then obviously she’s a moron and unworthy. End of story.” Then Mindy was whispering in his ear, and he leaned back and whispered, “Really?” She nodded. “Uhh, excuse me, dear sister and sister-from-another-mister, but this playboy has got to live it up while the night is young and the ladies are limber!”

And off they went.

It was then that Amy and I decided to go find Ephram and suggest that we all walk back to Mama Joy’s together, or maybe to Ephram’s house and get his enormous car and head out to Denver or something. Anything to escape the villainous clutches of the Promebago.

"What a night," he rumbled as he walked.

"Don't pout," Amy chided him as she bumped him with her hip. That, of course, bumped him into me, since we were walking on either side of the dejected little loner. "Makes you look even moodier than you really are, which should be, like, scientifically impossible."

"Watch it, will you?" I said. "You're going to be mean to him and end up sending _me_ into Mrs Gaither's oleanders instead.”

She shoved Ephram into me again, and I shoved back, sending her staggering off the sidewalk and into the gutter. When she hopped up to shove him again, he suddenly halted so she collided with me directly and said, "Hey, we're not turning Ephram into one of those Newton ball-click things!"

"We're not?" For that, he flicked my ear and I gasped, then pinched his bicep. He was still tickling me when Amy hopped up on his back.

"Get your hands off my woman, Brown!"

"I won't even point out how Spock-with-a-beard that is,” he grunted under her weight. Despite this, he actually let her ride pickaback for a whole block before he shrugged her off, and I barely caught her before she went down hard. Everybody laughed. It was actually almost like life didn’t suck.

We were almost to Mama Joy’s before Ephram said, “So it’s for real, huh?”

“What is?” It was Amy who bit.

“You guys.”

We were both startled, but I said, “You didn’t get that from the weeping session?”

“I know, it’s just… this is the first time I’ve seen you two, y’know, acting coupley since I found out. It’s like meeting a celebrity for the first time; before that you could rationalise that they were just a digital entity created by some huge company. Like the Gorillaz, or Max Headroom.”

“Max who?” Amy asked.

“Sorry, I was watching ‘I Love The Eighties’ the other night.”

We both glanced at each other, and finally Amy said, “So what, lesbians are fictional?”

“No, I’ve met plenty,” he said as he stuffed his hands into his pants pockets. “Thing is… I’ve never known anybody who came out. All the gays and lesbians I’ve known were already out before I met them. I was never saying you guys blew my mind to smithereens; it's just a _little_ bit different, that’s all.”

“Gotcha,” I said.

“But I wanna make one thing clear; I do _not _need you guys hanging off me just because I’m single. You can be free to frolic in the girls-only meadow of happiness all you want. No sense making me the third wheel.”

Grinning snarkily, I skipped ahead a little and turned to walk backwards. “What if you're the third wheel in a tricycle? Wouldn't that mean you not only belong but that we _can't_ do anything without you?”

“Stop that. I mean it, I'm totally cool being an army of one.”

“What if _we’re _not cool with that?” Amy put in, locking arms with him. “It sucks that the girl who should have taken you to this thing picked the worst possible time to drop you like a hot potato.”

“That’s not exactly how it-“

“The point is, if she really was a decent person she’d have sucked it up and gone to Prom with you _anyway_. You were in Coupleopolis right up until pre-Prom days and you didn’t have adequate grieving time before it started, which meant you couldn’t get a date. She set you up to fail.”

“Pretty unkind of her,” I agreed.

Ephram had that look on his face, like he didn’t agree with us but he was both amused and slightly touched by our point of view. “This is really, uh, bolstering or whatever, but I’m starving and that bag of Reese’s Pieces is like, ancient history. Can we go in now?”

In we went. Basically what happened was we ate our way through several baskets of french fries and had a few milkshakes, we bickered, we laughed, we kept pulling Ephram back into the booth when he tried to let us have “alone time” or some shit. At one point, he actually took out a $20 and put it on the table, daring us to make out in the middle of the restaurant.

“You are sick,” Amy laughed.

“It’s easy money; do it or don’t do it, I’ll live either way.”

Staring between each other and his mischievous smile, then around at all the other patrons (every single one of them were half-drunk Prom refugees), we finally shrugged and spent a few seconds playing tonsil hockey over the top of the table. Amy was sitting next to Ephram, you see, so this was even more showy, which I think is why Ephram dared us in the first place; he never believed we’d do it. So we earned ourselves a quick Jackson.

“Now for the _real _test,” I said.

“Huh?” Ephram mumbled dazedly. Then, when he felt my shoeless foot wriggling in his lap he let out a yelp. “What the- what are you _doing?!”_

“Checking to see if you got off on that,” I laughed. “Good boy; not so easily flustered. Respectable.”

“Laynie,” Amy hissed, slightly embarrassed – but to her credit, only embarrassed that I had done the latter thing. She was actually mostly comfortable that we had kissed in a public location. It was a step in the right direction for both of us.

“You two are going to be the death of me,” he sighed, mopping his brow with a napkin.

“We’ll play footsie all through your funeral,” I promised. They both laughed, and when Nina came by we ordered more fries. On the night went for a long, long while.

Back to my house, sans the boy. My mom got fed a story that Amy just wanted to “crash”. We spent all night taking turns with Old Blue, and sometimes not; sometimes we just put it aside and felt what our bodies were like when painted across each other. It was ethereal. It was transcendental. It was the clichéd magic of Prom Night, only it was actually truly an evening to remember for the rest of our lives. Our lives _together._

And now I’m so horny thinking about it that I can’t even keep writing; this leather-bound log is turning into some kind of trashy Harlequin novel! K, time to go give my significant other a call and see if her parents were pissed about the unexpected sleepover thing. I hope not; it seems like it was a really great idea on my end.

_Laynie_


	27. ♦ TWENTY-SEVEN ♦

Hello, Long-Lost Diary. It’s been awhile. Since I don’t put dates on the entries, you have no way of knowing that “awhile” is several months. Until now.

Summer’s over, but what a Summer it was! We spent every waking moment together, touching, kissing, exploring… perspiring. Loving. It’s a thing you _do_, I get it now; it’s not an event or an object. Love has to be alive and allowed to take over and sweep over everything, or it snuffs itself out... like wildfire. Rest assured, ours is alive and blazing.

Of course, “every waking moment” isn't true in a literal sense. We made trips to Denver with the boys, we all beat ourselves up about last semester’s grades… Ephram’s in New York right now, finishing up some internship at Juilliard thingy that’s supposed to be a huge deal. Bright’s working like a dog, but I think he kind of likes it. Gives him some focus and takes his mind off all the colleges that rejected him. Poor dope.

I’m working, too; I started waitressing at Mama Joy’s. Seemed like a good way to repay Nina for how unbelievably cool she was about everything that happened; she’s still keeping our secret, even though she talks to Ephram’s dad every day (they’re neighbors). Maybe it sounds harsh, but I honestly expected her to spill long ago. Lesbians in Everwood; it’s just too good to keep to yourself! Nope. She’s a vault, that woman. And she’s always asking me how we are when nobody’s in earshot, not just checking in out of a sense of responsibility, but because she cares. I love having my boss be my surrogate mom, too. Kind of helpful.

No, nobody else knows. No leaks in security. We’ve kept this whole crazy thing under our hats for an entire season without any major slip-ups. Close calls, sure, dozens of them… but not one true scary moment like when Bright barged in, trying to ask us about movie choices. It’s been smooth sailing.

We did have a rough spell when everybody found out about Amy’s Aunt Linda – she’s HIV positive. I had no clue, either, but I was in the extremely small minority that said, “So what?” The rest of Everwood was shitting bricks, just like I said they would… and all but ran her and Amy’s dad out of business. Don’t they understand that as long as she doesn’t randomly slice open her own arm and bleed into their mouths that it doesn’t matter? She was almost literally _chased out of town –_ she went back to Doctors Without Borders in Africa or one of those poverty-stricken places_._ Everything but the flaming torches and cries of _“GET THE MONSTER!”_ Some people are so blind and mentally-deficient. Makes me wanna vom. So yeah… I had to help Amy and Bright through that, they were mopey for a while. That’s what friends are for anyway (or whatever it was Dionne Warwick sang about forever ago).

No, I never did beat Final Fantasy – but Amy and I found out that we have this total hardcore love of _Marvel Vs Capcom. _Something about it is just stupidly fun; fighting games have always been a good release, but this one is just cartoony enough to be funny, adding to the entertainment value. Bright and Ephram are thrilled because this means we spend less time trying to drag them into the Gap or watching chick flicks. Many an evening has been wiled away on random tournaments with the winner getting extra pizza.

My hair is different now; it’s longer in the back, still kind of a bob though. I’m also totally doing this silly feathered-bangs thing right now, purely because it’s _not _in. Because I’m so avant-garde. Amy says she likes it, but then again she’s had the exact same haircut for like, ten years or something. And I’m going on and on about my hair because that’s pretty much the big news with my image, so enough about me.

What about my meds? I'm recovering nicely from it, although I did have a couple of crying fits and some very mild dizzy spells after I quit cold turkey – once during dinner (which freaked my parents out a lot more). Wanna know something really ironic? That actually improved my relationship with my mother a little. Dad's still swimming in booze and out to lunch, but now, once in a while, just when my mother is winding up to scream into my face for a lengthy session... she holds up short, sighs, and hugs me really tight instead. As if my nearly passing out maybe reminded her that she could lose more than just the one kid. See? Silver linings abound when I'm around.

Speaking of my dearly departed brother...

Amy and I went swimming in the spot where she used to swim with Bright and Colin yesterday. It was really hard for her at first; I could see her fighting against her desire to cry, to mourn for the millionth time. We got past it, little by little. And I guess it's why I’m writing in this today, because of the conversation we had while we were lying out on the rocks, warming ourselves in the sun and getting skin cancer.

“You don’t ever… think I’m trying to replace Colin with you, do you?”

“Nah.”

“Good.”

For several minutes, neither of us spoke. Then I asked, “Why would you ask that after all this time?”

“Because of where we are,” she told me quietly, meekly. “I took Colin here, I’m taking you here… I told him ‘I love you’ for the first time here.”

I nodded, then smirked at the clouds. “But you told _me _that for the first time in the arcade.” We both laughed at that memory; it had been over something pointless. I creamed Bright in air hockey and she was so proud of me that it just came tumbling out, and then we both laughed and kissed and I said it back, and the few patrons who noticed gasped but then we just acted like it didn’t matter and anybody who saw it forgot. Well, except Bright, who made a disgusted face and stomped off (probably more because he lost than because he thought us making out was gross).

“Yeah, that’s true; I know. Just… I don’t want you to ever think that for a single second. Though there’s plenty of irony in the way I can’t seem to stop dating your family, I guess.”

“Doesn’t matter much. Even if you were drawn to me because I’m kinda like Colin in some weird way that I totally can’t pick up on, it still amounts to the same thing in the end: I get to date my best friend until the day I die. Why split hairs? I’m so lucky I could hurl.”

Amy snorted in disbelief. “Hurl, huh? That’s the ultimate expression of love?”

“Isn’t it? Caring about somebody so much it ties your stomach in knots?”

She was quiet for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of water and birds overhead, watching tree branches sway in the light summer breeze. “Yeah, I guess it is. I’d hurl for you, Laynie.”

“I’d do more than that. I’d die for you. I’d _live _for you and you alone if I had to.”

At that, she sat up and stared at me. “Laynie…”

Feeling my face reddening (and not because it was sunburned), I pulled off my shades and whispered, “I’m sorry. I know you don’t like it when I’m in gushy-mode.”

“That’s not true. It scares me… because I understand how you feel. Which is terrifying, how bad we have it for each other, isn’t it?”

“Don’t be scared,” I whisper, smiling in spite of the hammering in my ribcage. “I’m right here.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent, uh, “christening” ye ole swimming hole. And I mean it exactly how it sounds, man. There was something in every atom of nature around us that approved and cheered for what we were doing, and it made it awfully hard to hold back. So why would we? Expressing love is above such petty concerns as modesty and societal trappings. It’s the beginning and the end.

And this is the end of this chronicle. No more writing in the book that used to belong to Colin. I'm not going to be keeping a journal at all anymore; let's face it, since I went all Summer without once looking at it I think it's safe to say I've evolved beyond this melancholy period of my life where I need to vent with pen and ink. In truth, I just don't need a book to talk to anymore, because... because now Amy and I can talk. About absolutely everything in the wide world. She's my “sympathetic ear” now. It's not just me taking care of Amy, it's Amy taking care of me. Sisters, friends and paramours. Confidants. Real, true, unconditional, everlasting love.

To think it all started with popcorn.

It's funny, y'know? I started keeping a diary to work through all of my issues. I actually can't be sure exactly _how _it helped, but it did. Some absurd way, it helped me sort out my emotions and stick the jagged shards of my life back together to form an imperfect-but-whole picture again. When we started this journey I was alone, doped-up, wrung out, and waiting for life to end. While I was waiting, it reset itself, let me have a fresh start. Gave Amy to me and made me happy with her. I'm happy now.

You hear that? Laynie Hart is HAPPY. They said it couldn't be done!

I have something to share here, something almost as bad as that wretched poem: song lyrics. Wow, I'm such a high school stereotype, but... this is a little something that British bastard Seal once wrote and I fought so hard to dislike it, tooth and friggin' nail... and in the end, Amy won. Always does.

_I... I am so unsure_  
Every minute that waits,  
Every second that I'm away from you

_And love is a way that has no rules_  
Know that I'm loving you,  
Even if it's a fool that waits in vain  
Waits in vain

_Now... now my days become long  
Okay, I know I'll never feel the same again_

_So please don't let my lows bring you down_  
Always know that I need you  
Yes I do, oh

_Yesterday it hit me:_  
I felt we were slipping away  
Say, if you can, “It's okay”  
Just like you said way then

_Sometimes I fall and I feel like_  
I don't know the way  
Won't you say, if you can, “It's okay”?  
Just like you said then  
Just like you said, oh...  
Just like you said way back then  
Just like you said

I used to hear that song and demand Amy switch the radio on or let me change the disc to Natalie Merchant or something else tolerable, but now... now it chokes me up every single time it plays. Now it's “our song”, which sickens me even as it fills me with that syrupy Kodak glow of true happiness – because, just like I said, this aberrant mademoiselle is _happy_ now. No worries. She's definitely going to be okay.

So goodbye, Journal, and... thanks for listening.

_~Laynie Hart-Abbott_


End file.
